Felipe Calderón and Genaro García Luna, talk during a security conference in Mexico City on August 27, 2010.Alexandre Meneghini (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The DEA followed in Genaro García Luna’s footsteps more than a decade ago. This was confirmed this Thursday by Miguel Madrigal, an anti-drug agent who was subpoenaed to testify at the trial in New York of the Minister of Public Security in the government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012). After the arrest of Sergio Villarreal Barragán El Grande in September 2010, Madrigal met with the drug lord for several hours and provided information about bribes allegedly received by the Beltrán Leyva cartel officer. He did not name the date of the meeting. “He provided detailed information about these deals,” said the official, who worked at the agency’s Mexico City office between 2008 and 2015. The witness also spoke of Champs Elysées [Campos Eliseos], a luxury restaurant in the capital that intelligence sources said was in front of the US embassy where the money deliveries took place. “We had information that high-ranking officials received bribes from the cartels there,” he said.
Madrigal pointed out where the restaurant was on the map in several pictures and said US agents went to the location to see if they could find information that would help them learn more about the money shipments Experienced. “We were looking for cameras,” the witness commented. But there was none. The DEA was particularly concerned about the information it received because it constantly exchanged sensitive data on criminal groups with the federal police force, which was then under Calderón’s command. Information was shared, phone tracing, locations of suspicious homes and tracking drug dealers’ vehicles, for example.
The witness pointed directly to Édgar Bayardo, a former commander of the Federal Police. After the 2008 cartel war between Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán’s group and the Beltrán Leyva brothers faction, the DEA began to realize that Bayardo was only sharing information about capos from Arturo Beltrán’s group such as Édgar Valdez, Villarreal The Barbie and Harold Poveda The Rabbit. Nothing about Ismael El Mayo Zambada, his brother Jesús El Rey Zambada, or any other Sinaloa Cartel allies. The American agents became suspicious.
Shortly thereafter, a DEA source showed Madrigal video showing Bayardo’s car parked in front of one of the homes of El Rey Zambada, the Sinaloa cartel man responsible for bribing García Luna, according to testimony from the cooperating witnesses , who have already testified at this trial . Or so they thought. “We informed our bosses that Bayardo received bribes from Rey,” the witness said. The agent shared the information with his supervisor to report to Bayardo’s supervisor, Commissioner Víctor Garay, at the Federal Police. After discovering where El Rey lived, they coordinated efforts to capture him, but he had already escaped. Suspicions of leaks and betrayal grew.
Jesús Zambada was finally arrested in October 2008 in an operation that the federal police had nothing to do with. When Madrigal Bayardo shared the information, the conversation was brief. “He looked worried,” recalled the agent, who is currently based in Texas. “It struck me as odd.” The witness said that from that moment on, the information they shared with their Mexican counterparts was limited and that they began to act “cautiously”.
“With the help of the government, the cartel grew in terms of territory, the amount of drugs we moved, and it eliminated its enemies,” Villarreal Barragán told a Brooklyn court Jan. 23. El Grande was the first witness to testify at García Luna’s trial. “Usually they put a suitcase on the table, unzipped it and showed the contents,” the boss said of the payments to the former secretary. “He gave us information about operations and investigations against the organization and helped us get rid of commanders and police chiefs in every field,” he added.
Bayardo later became a protected witness in December 2008 in a case of collusion between officials and members of the drug trade and specifically the Sinaloa cartel. A year later, the commander was murdered in December 2009 at a Starbucks coffee shop in Benito Juárez, south of Mexico City. According to the chronicle of the murder, the officer was an informant for the DEA, the federal police, and the Sinaloa cartel. He was riddled with bullets by two hitmen who got out of a truck. They killed him and seriously injured one of his companions and a snack bar.
Madrigal’s testimony continues this afternoon in Brooklyn court in the final hearing of the week. García Luna is accused of drug trafficking, organized crime and false information. The Propublica portal announced on January 22 that the DEA had been investigating the former Mexican official for more than 10 years.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS México newsletter and receive all the important information about current events in this country