Florida court awards Mexican government massive civil judgment against former security chief

A Florida court awarded the Mexican government a massive civil judgment Thursday against its former security chief who is now serving a lengthy prison sentence in the United States for taking bribes from drug traffickers.

Judge Lisa Walsh ordered Genaro García Luna to pay more than $748 million and his wife Linda Cristina Pereyra to hand over more than $1.7 billion.

García Luna was sentenced to more than 38 years in a U.S. prison last October for taking massive bribes to help drug traffickers.

Mexico’s former secretary of public security was convicted by a New York jury in 2023 of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect the violent Sinaloa cartel that he was supposedly combating. He is the highest-level Mexican government official to be convicted in the United States.

He served as secretary of public security to then-President Felipe Calderón from 2006 to 2012.

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