Mexico’s top police officer was El Chapo’s “Sinaloa cartel’s most valuable asset,” the feds said at a trial in Brooklyn.

Mexico’s former police chief played the part of a drug war hero by adding more than 30,000 cops to the country’s federal police force, but federal prosecutors say it was all a front – Genaro García Luna was indeed taking money from a fearful El Chapo. The Sinaloa cartel will continue to supply drugs to the United States

“He also had a second job, a dirtier job, a more lucrative job,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Pilmar said in his opening statement Monday at Garcia Luna’s trial in federal court in Brooklyn.

Garcia Luna, 54, a former Mexican public security minister, is accused of stealing briefcases full of money from the Sinaloa cartel when it was run by notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

From 2006 to 2012, under then-President Felipe Calderon, Pilmar said he ran the Mexican equivalent of the FBI, consolidating his power by adding to the ranks of the federal police.

The cartel continued its billion-dollar drug operation, paying to “bribe the federal police, put them on the payroll, make them part of the organization,” Pilmar said. “The defendant took their money and betrayed his oath to his country.”

El Chapo was convicted at the end of the trial in 2018 and sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years in 2019.

At El Chapo’s trial, cartel defector Jesús Zambada Garcia testified that he personally delivered briefcases containing millions of cash to Garcia Luna at a Mexican restaurant.

In return, Pilmar said, Garcia Luna leaked confidential information to law enforcement about impending arrests, passed cocaine through security checkpoints, and turned his federal cops into bodyguards, drug couriers and “armed mercenaries” for the cartel.

“Jurors, the evidence will show that the defendant, the man who was supposed to be in charge of fighting the Sinaloa cartel, was in fact his most valuable asset,” Pilmar said on Monday.

But defense attorney Cesar de Castro said that Garcia Luna had actually done his job of fighting crime too well, and that the government’s case was based on the words of ruthless criminals seeking revenge for his client’s imprisonment.

“What better revenge than to bury the man who waged war against the cartels?” de Castro said. “These killers, tormentors, kidnappers literally kill two birds with one stone.”

De Castro said that cartel members who will testify hope for lighter sentences and the possibility of a new life in the United States. Prosecutors will show the jury “no money, no photos, no videos, no email, no texts, no records.” , no documents” to back up his allegations of bribery, he said.

During his career, Garcia Luna has met top US law enforcement officials in the FBI, DEA and Department of Homeland Security, as well as members of Congress, Senator John McCain, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, de Castro said.

He also helped bring technology and equipment from the US and helped create a “huge database” called Plataforma Mexico to fight the cartels.

“This will be a very public and angry demonstration by your government, which has been rejecting a strategic partner for years,” de Castro said. “The government will help the cartels get revenge on those responsible for their capture.”