More Mexican leaders are being implicated in the Sinaloa cartel's dirty dealings during 'El Chapo' Guzman's trial

The trial of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has entered its second week.
In testimony on Tuesday, a former senior Sinaloa cartel figure implicated more Mexican officials in corruption.
Guzman's defense team is trying to cast him as a "scapegoat" for the cartel's true leaders.

A little over a week into the trial of accused Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, testimony has already implicated two former presidents and other senior officials in corruption and bribery.

Zambada also said that members of the Sinaloa cartel, including members of the Beltran Leyva Organization, which was a Sinaloa cartel ally until a split in the late 2000s, also pooled $50 million in protection money for Garcia Luna.

"That was said," Zambada said of the pooled money, according to Sancho.

Mexican Public Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna at a meeting with public-security secretaries in Mexico City, September 7, 2011. BusinessInsider

Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration who worked with Garcia Luna in the 1990s and 2000s, cast doubt on allegations against the former Mexican official.

uring the time that I worked with him," Vigil added, "he never compromised any of our cases."

Garcia Luna was not the only official mentioned on Tuesday. Zambada said that in 2005, his brother paid a "few million dollars" to an adviser to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who was at the time the mayor of Mexico City and will take office as Mexico's president on December 1.

The payment was made in the belief that the official would be public-security secretary if Lopez Obrador won the presidential election in 2006. (Lopez Obrador stepped down as mayor in mid-2005 to run for president, losing a disputed election to Calderon.)

Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador casts his vote during Mexico's 2018 presidential election in Mexico City, Mexico, July 1, 2018. BusinessInsider

Though the official in question was not immediately clear in court, Gabriel Regino, who was a security official during Lopez Obrador's mayorship, denied the allegation, saying on Twitter, "It is false that during my exercise of public service I have received some bribe from the trafficker Jesus Zambada."

Regino said his government position had "motivated" accusations against him and that he denied "categorically" Zambada's claims. He said he was ready to testify to any authority, national or foreign.

During opening statements last week, Guzman's defense said that "El Mayo" Zambada had maintained his freedom through "hundreds of millions of dollars" in bribes that went "up to the very top," including to the current and former presidents of Mexico, both of whom denied the allegation.

When Guzman's lawyer asked Zambada about the relationship between the official and Lopez Obrador, prosecutors objected and Judge Brian Cogan stopped that line of questioning, according to Reuters legal reporter Brendan Pierson, who added that earlier in the day Cogan had issued a "heavily redacted order" limiting what the defense could ask the prosecution's cooperating witnesses during cross-examinations.

More Mexican leaders are being implicated in the Sinaloa cartel's dirty dealings during 'El Chapo' Guzman's trial

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