MEXICO: EX-SECURITY CHIEF EMBEZZLED $745.9 MILLION

Mexican authorities said Thursday that former top security official Genaro Garcia Luna embezzled as much as $745.9 million from government technology contracts.

Pablo Gomez, the head of Mexico’s anti-money laundering unit, said Garcia Luna and associates set up companies that got 30 dubious government contracts while he was Mexico’s top security official, from 2006 to 2012, and for six years afterward.

Garcia Luna “put together a network of corruption and money laundering to benefit himself and his close associates,” Gomez said.

Gomez described some of the properties the Mexican government is seeking to recover in a lawsuit filed in Florida against Garcia Luna and his alleged associates, who he described as a “family business conglomerate.” Garcia Luna moved to Florida after leaving office in Mexico.

Garcia Luna is currently on trial in New York, accused of accepting millions of dollars to let the Sinaloa cartel traffic tons of cocaine to the U.S. The lawsuit is separate from the criminal trial.

Garcia Luna allegedly channeled money from prison security and government intelligence technology contracts to offshore accounts, many in Barbados, then sent it to Miami to buy fancy condos and vintage cars.

Gomez suggested Garcia Luna and his associates had a penchant for vintage Mustangs from the 1960s and ’70s, saying they had bought several of them. He said they also bought luxury sports cars like Lamborghinis and Ferraris.

Gomez said the Florida lawsuit was filed in September 2021.

The contracts were for things like surveillance, monitoring and communications equipment used in prisons and in intelligence work. The contracts were presumably inflated. In one case, Gomez said, the contract was simply falsified.