Washington DC.- The drug trafficker Jesús Reynaldo Zambada García, “El Rey”, denied in federal court in Brooklyn having delivered seven million dollars for the 2006 campaign of today’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Questioned by César de Castro, Genaro García Luna’s defense lawyer, the Sinaloa Cartel boss said that he only gave money to Regino, referring to Gabriel Regino, former Undersecretary of Public Security during the López Obrador Head of Government.
Before the jury, de Castro asked him why he did not remember that in 2013 he had told US prosecutors that he had delivered seven million dollars for the electoral campaign of today’s federal president.
“The King” said no, that he had not declared that, but that he had given money to Regino and that “it was money for a campaign.”
Given the reluctance of the capo to talk about the issue, de Castro took some papers to show the 2013 statement, however, the prosecutor Saritha Komatireddy objected to the litigant’s intention, the judge called the parties and García Luna’s defense attorney no longer insisted in the subject.
Yesterday, during the first day of his appearance, Zambada García assured that he gave Regino three million dollars because he expected him to become Secretary of Public Security of Mexico City.
Today, de Castro tried to link the delivery of money to the former capital official with President López Obrador, referring to a testimony that “El Rey” would have given to the Prosecutor’s Office in 2013, when he had already become a cooperating witness.
Zambada García was arrested in October 2008 in Mexico City and extradited to the United States in April 2012.
In 2018 he participated as a witness in the trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and there, for the first time publicly, he declared that he had paid bribes to both García Luna and Regino.
Yesterday, he said that in 2008, the capital’s policemen saved him from being killed by agents of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) and hitmen of the Beltrán Leyva who were infiltrating, during the shooting that led to his capture in the Lindavista neighborhood.
