Genaro García Luna is a former Mexican government employee and engineer. He served as Secretary of Public Security in the federal cabinet. After his term working for the Mexican government, Genaro works as a consultant and businessman evaluating the social, political and financial economics in Mexico and Latin America. He is a partner in the company GLAC which provides an index to evaluate risk and security conditions. The GLAC index is also published in El Heraldo De Mexico, and El Financiero and is used by the business community to evaluate the risk and security conditions for different states and cities in Mexico. García Luna was included in a list of the "10 most corrupt Mexicans" published by Forbes in 2013. He broke a self-imposed silence in a letter to Steve Forbes that his inclusion in the list was based on lies and that it lacked journalistic integrity. He is the author of Contra el crimen: ¿Por qué 1,661 corporaciones de policía no bastan? Pasado, Presente y Futuro de la Policía en México , where he first laid out the basic concepts of the New Police Model for Mexico, placing the emphasis on the importance of intelligence tasks, and “El Nuevo Modelo de Seguridad para México”, which indicates what are the considerations and the state vision to confront a national priority. In the 2018 trial of the drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, El Chapo's partner Ismael Zambada García’s brother, Jesus Zambada García, testified to bribing García Luna with suitcases stuffed with $3 million in cash on two occasions. On December 9, 2019, García Luna was arrested in Dallas on charges of taking millions in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.
His training includes specialization from security and intelligence agencies in the United States, Spain, Israel, France, Colombia and Japan. In 1989, García Luna started his career in intelligence at the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, where he was responsible of Counterintelligence and Terrorism. In 1998, he became the Coordinator General for Intelligence of the Preventive Federal Police, where he designed the conceptual framework for intelligence areas and their executive integration. In 2000, after winning the position in an open contest, he was named Director for Planning and Operation for the Federal Judicial Police, where he began a re-engineering process for the agency. It included new administrative structures, operational concepts, and incorporating cutting-edge information systems. This process made way for the Federal Investigation Agency. In 2001 was designated founder and Director General of the Agencia Federal de Investigación, Garcia Luna became the target of widespread criticism after the discovery that a December 9, 2005 police raid conducted by the AFI on a ranch where kidnapping victims were supposedly being held was staged for the Mexican public to see on live television. The alleged kidnappers, who were presented to the Mexican public as having been detained live at the scene, were actually detained the previous morning, on December 8, 2005, offsite, and were held illegally without being presented to a judge during almost 20 hours. Furthermore, one of the alleged kidnappers sustains that he was tortured into playing along. These and many other violations of due process irremediably polluted the case and, to this day, it is impossible to know what really happened. On December 1, 2006, García Luna became Secretary of Public Security of México. Since then, he founded the Federal Police Force which began operating on June 2009, under the New Police Model, designed by him. In April 2011, Garcia Luna became president of the XXVIII International Drug Enforcement Conference ; whose World Summit was held in Mexico. On April 9, 2015, Genaro Garcia Luna was nominated for election as Member of the Board of SecureAlert, Inc., a Utah based company active in the offender monitoring business. SecureAlert, Inc. is controlled by Sapinda Asia, Ltd. and Mr. Lars Windhorst, beneficially owning 51.6% of the outstanding shares of the company SecureAlert. Inc, as of March 6, 2015.
Financial transparency
García Luna has been unable to explain his personal wealth, which includes luxury homes and real estate in Mexico City which would be unaffordable on a Mexican civil servant's salary. It is noted however that García's family has owned several properties in the area which may have been inherited by him. However, an alternate explanation was offered by a witness in the 2018 trial of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. During the trial, the brother of El Chapo's former partner Ismael Zambada García testified to bribing García Luna with suitcases stuffed with $3 million in cash on two occasions. On December 9, 2019, García Luna was arrested in Dallas on charges of taking millions in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. The Attorney General of Mexico is looking to extradite him to Mexico on related charges. U.S. courts denied Garcia Luna's requests for release on bond in March and April 2020.Roberta S. Jacobson, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico asserted on May 3, 2020, that the Calderon government knew of the ties Genaro García Luna had with the Sinaloa Cartel. Calderon insisted they did not. The New York Times reported that the prosecution intends to introduce of cocaine and 4 kg of heroin confiscated in four raids as evidence against Garcia Luna. They also plan to use financial records and intercepted communications at the trial that is scheduled to begin on July 30.
