Rolando Herrera / Reform Agency
Wednesday, January 25, 2023 | 20:23
Mexico City.- Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard indicated that the civil lawsuit filed against Genaro García Luna in the United States seeks to restore to the country all the assets that the former Secretary of Public Security has in that country.
In a remote conference from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he participates as a representative of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the forum of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), he reported that the appeal was presented in September 2021 by the Unit of Financial Intelligence (FIU).
The complaint was filed after a search of the entire conglomerate of companies that the former official created to manage resources that allegedly originated from public contracts.
“The objective of this lawsuit – why was it filed in Florida? – is restitution, to restore to the Government of Mexico all the assets that exist in the name of Genaro García Luna in Florida, especially, whether they are in his name or his relatives,” he said.
This morning, during his conference at the National Palace, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador referred to the lawsuit, and said that García Luna’s assets could amount to 700 million dollars.
García Luna, who is now facing a criminal trial in New York for drug trafficking, allegedly obtained million-dollar contracts from the Mexican government after retiring from public service in 2012, but taking advantage of the contacts generated in more than a decade in which he held relevant positions.
Ebrard said that the Foreign Ministry together with the UIF is following up on the demand.
“It is a civil lawsuit for damages against 39 companies and trusts belonging to or in which Genaro García Luna or his relatives participate. The Financial Intelligence Unit presented an estimate that there would be close to 700 million dollars linked to public contracts of different nature,” he said.
Ebrard is in Argentina where he traveled with the representation of López Obrador to participate in the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
Among the main results of this meeting, he considered, is the support that the creation of a regional drug regulation agency has added, which would help to face crises such as the one suffered by Covid-19 in the future.
“Today the region has six agencies: Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Chile that have level 4 recognition, that is, they are equivalent to the United States FDA.
“What is being considered here is that these agencies converge and we have a single agency for all of Latin America and the Caribbean, this due to the experience of the 2020 and 2021 pandemic, from which we are just emerging. That is, since there was no that approval and there was no agency, for example, a country, or several countries, we could not send vaccines because there was no one to authorize them,” he said.
