“Char” for Borderland Beat
This article was reposted and translated from DW MINDS
In an exclusive interview, the former member of the Sinaloa Cartel’s top leadership assures that García Harfuch received bribes from the criminal organization and stole two million dollars from his father, Dámaso López Núñez.
Omar García Harfuch, former Security official and aspiring candidate for Mexico City’s Chief of Government
WRITTEN BY: ANABEL HERNÁNDEZ
Dámaso López Serrano, alias “Mini Lic,” who became one of the main directors of the Sinaloa Cartel, friend, partner and rival of the criminal group “Los Chapitos,” made up of the sons of his compadre Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo,” confessed publicly.
In an exclusive interview that I conducted with him on October 1 in a US city, he stated the role that Omar García Harfuch played for the Sinaloa Cartel when he was head of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) during the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto. López Serrano accuses García Harfuch of receiving a bribe from “Los Chapitos” to arrest his father Dámaso López Núñez, alias “El Licenciado,” who was “El Chapo’s” right-hand man for more than 16 years.
“Mini Lic”, currently a collaborating witness for the US Department of Justice and one of the key pieces in the judicial processes opened in that country against Ivan, Alfredo, Ovidio and Joaquin Guzman, the criminal quartet of brothers better known as “Los Chapitos,” claims that in the operation carried out in 2017 by the AIC in Mexico City to arrest his father, at least two million dollars were stolen from him.
After investigating and seeking to corroborate the version of “Mini Lic”, DEA agents assigned at that time to the US embassy in Mexico, confirmed directly to me this week that there are recordings of communications tapped by the DEA to Mexican criminal groups in which they detected a modus operandi of Garcia Harfuch and his team to keep money and drugs found in operations carried out by the AIC with intelligence information shared by the US government.
Until a few weeks ago García Harfuch was the Secretary of Citizen Security of Mexico City appointed by the Chief of Government Claudia Sheinbaum, who is the virtual candidate of the official party Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena) for the presidency of the Republic. Now García Harfuch is seeking to be Morena’s candidate to compete for the head of government of the Mexican capital in the 2024 elections.
Confessed and sentenced
Born on November 23, 1987, “Mini Lic” confesses that from 2005 to 2017 he was part of the Sinaloa Cartel. His father Dámaso López Núñez, alias “El Licenciado,” was “El Chapo’s” right-hand man for 16 years, and that is how he entered the world of drug trafficking. His criminal career ran parallel to that of “Los Chapitos”, whom he had known since his adolescence.
In criminal records filed in the Southern District Court of California and the Eastern District Court of Virginia, Lopez Serrano was accused of trafficking tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin into the United States from 2005 until 2016, charges to which he pleaded guilty in 2018 in California court. After making a plea deal and cooperating intensely, he was given a brief 5-year prison sentence.
He was released in 2022 and is on probation. “I am a cooperating witness, I contributed to the elaboration of accusations against some of the leaders of the cartel of which I was a part and I find myself as a man who has been tried, prosecuted, and has already served his sentence,” he says in the interview I conducted with him.
His contributions to the U.S. government are considered so credible in that country that they were included in the extradition request for Ovidio Guzmán, alias “Ratón”, granted by the Mexican government on September 15.
The war with “Los Chapitos
He points out that since he was 15 years old he lived with Ivan, Alfredo, Ovidio and Joaquin Guzman. At first they were just party companions, then partners in drug trafficking. He is aware of the evolution of “El Chapo’s” sons from being narco-juniors to becoming a criminal group, which according to the US government is the most powerful faction within the Sinaloa Cartel.
“Mini Lic” affirms that the power of “Los Chapitos” has been founded on terror and corruption at all levels of government. He confesses that he himself when he was part of the criminal organization, paid bribes to authorities, which he says is indispensable to be able to operate.
-What did you do with your drug money? Tell me five things you spent that money on, in order of importance.
-In musical groups, alcohol, buying property, weapons, and equipment for my people, I think those four things. But what I spent all the money on was paying the government, but that’s something I had to do, yes or yes.
“In Sinaloa, the cartel is in charge, it puts the governor, municipal presidents, senators, deputies, and trustees in charge,” he said emphatically.
After Guzmán Loera’s extradition to the United States in January 2017, a month later a dispute broke out with “Los Chapitos” for control of the criminal faction.
“Mini Lic” claims that “El Chapo’s” sons not only wanted him and his father out of the drug trafficking business but wanted to exterminate them.
His father was arrested in May 2017 by the Mexico Attorney General’s Office’s AIC in a luxury apartment building located in Mexico City’s Anzures neighborhood. The AIC was headed by García Harfuch, who was in the post from November 2016 to May 2019, according to records of the Public Function Secretariat.
According to published news reports about the capture, on the same day, an operation was carried out in the Azcapotzalco delegation, also in Mexico City, where Víctor Geovanni González Sepúlveda “El Chómpiras,” who they said was López Núñez’s financial operator, was arrested.
When “Mini Lic” received information that “Los Chapitos” wanted to assassinate him, he decided in July 2017 to turn himself into US justice.
Garcia Harfuch is not Batman, he is worse than The Joker.
– What have been your family’s experiences around this police chief Omar García Harfuch? Is he an honest cop?
-Is he more Joker than Batman,” I asked him, picking up on the propaganda that tries to paint the police chief as if he were the comic book hero.
-It’s worse because Joker is bad and pretends to be bad, he never says he’s good, but this one? He was the one who captured my dad for a bribe from Los Chapitos, he also arrested my mom, he planted drugs on them. He stole from my dad.
-How much did he steal from him?
-Approximately two million dollars.
-Where was this money?
-That money was divided between my dad’s apartment and the place where they arrested one of my dad’s workers (El Chómpiras), I think it was in Azcapotzalco. When they arrested my dad, he asked him to turn me in, to give him my location so he could ‘protect’ me because Los Chapitos were going to kill me. It was someone important in the operation, to tell them where I was, because they knew I was in Mexico City, that they could protect me; on the other hand, if they found me Los Chapitos were going to kill me. My father did not agree.
“Later I learned from government sources that (García) Harfuch was pressuring them to prosecute my mother for the drug deal,” added “Mini Lic.
Later, informants within the AIC informed him “that Garcia Harfuch’s intention was to arrest my father and kill me, that this was the agreement he had reached with Los Chapitos. That he was going to pretend that I defended myself, that I attacked them, that I confronted them and they were going to kill me.”
“Approximately a year before, through a person I had working in Mexico City, he told me that (Garcia) Harfuch wanted to collaborate with us, that he could help us a lot because he was in the position that Tomás Zeron (former head of the AIC) had before and that he was very important, that he could help us a lot by passing us information, operations and capturing or eliminating enemies.
“My father didn’t want to see him or to be approached by him, he just said no, that it was too much of a commitment and that for the moment he wasn’t involved”.
Was he asking for something in particular, I asked, referring to Garcia Harfuch.
-To begin with, he was asking for a meeting and obviously money, he only offered his services but we never accepted, neither the meeting nor the talks. That was it.
“Mini Lic” states that Ivan Guzman Salazar, leader of “Los Chapitos,” asked his partner, drug trafficker Gabriel Valenzuela, for two million dollars to pay the bribe to Garcia Harfuch to arrest “El Licenciado”. Of that money, it is said that 800 thousand dollars were paid to the head of the AIC, and 600 thousand dollars to “El Pollito” who was “El Licenciado’s” secretary and betrayed him by revealing his whereabouts. “El Chapito” kept 600 thousand dollars. When Valenzuela discovered that Ivan kept part of the money, he got angry with Ivan.
-The money they steal from his father, do you know how they steal it?
-My father’s secretary, his employee who worked as his secretary in Mexico City, when he was in prison, was the one who told us if they (the AIC) had presented the money, we said no. We told him they had not.
The two million dollars found in the apartment and in Azcapotzalco were not presented to the PGR as part of the seizure.
La Barbie denounced García Luna at the time.
This is not the first time a drug boss has revealed police complicity. In 2012, from a Mexican jail, Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias “La Barbie”, a member of the Sinaloa Cartel on behalf of the Beltrán Leyva faction, sent me a letter whose contents I published as front page news in the newspaper Reforma, where he confessed to having paid bribes to the head of the federal Public Security Secretariat, Genaro García Luna, Luis Cárdenas Palomino, Ramón Pequeño and several police commanders.
At the time, the reaction of the police chiefs was to say that “La Barbie” was lying and said this in retaliation because they had captured him. This year in the Eastern District Court of New York it was confirmed that the accusation was true. Garcia Luna was found guilty of drug trafficking and of having received millions in bribes from members of the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for protection. All the officials pointed out by “La Barbie” were identified by the NY Prosecutor’s Office as part of the criminal network of corrupt police officers.
DEA confirms information
Given the seriousness of the accusations made by “Mini Lic” after the interview, I sought to confirm the information. A DEA agent active at the time in Mexico on condition of anonymity because the case could not yet be discussed officially confirmed the modus operandi described by Lopez Serrano.
“In 2017 and 2018 we had the phones of a criminal group in Michoacán hung up, they were dedicated to drug transport and money laundering. In the calls recorded during the intervention people spoke that AIC agents seized the money, but when we asked AIC about the money seized they said they did not go,” the US official said.
“Garcia Harfuch and his group were stealing their shipments, in this case, it was money. It happened twice and we no longer trusted them with intelligence.” “It was more than three million dollars each time,” he detailed.
“There was also an informant who said that AIC was stealing cocaine shipments and then selling it,” he added.
Another agent who knew the details of López Núñez’s arrest said that they also knew about the theft of money from that drug trafficker by García Harfuch and his team.
Black History
For more than 16 years I have investigated the group of corrupt police headed by Genaro García Luna, former Secretary of Federal Public Security during the six-year term of Felipe Calderón, and Luis Cárdenas Palomino, García Luna’s right-hand man, who at the time was the Regional Coordinator of the Federal Police.
During that six-year term, I revealed that both worked for the Sinaloa Cartel and that they even obtained drugs in the operations that the same group of police officers then trafficked. Years later, the U.S. government accused both officials of drug trafficking and of receiving millionaire bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltran Leyva faction in exchange for protection.
In this space for the past three years, I have pointed out that Garcia Harfuch was part of the team closest to Cardenas Palomino. He joined the PF in 2008 thanks to him even though he had no capacity. I documented that in the PF he did not pass his confidence control exams and that in the polygraph exam – lie detector – he showed signs of falsehood when he was asked if he had any links with a criminal group and if he had consumed drugs. I have documented that he was commander of the PF in Guerrero when commanders of that corporation, of which he was the superior chief, participated in the attack against the Ayotzinapa normalistas and in their disappearance.
As if that were not enough, I obtained official documents that prove that the Internal Affairs Unit of the PF carried out an investigation and discovered that during the time when García Harfuch was the head of that corporation in Guerrero, several of its members were involved with organized crime. In spite of everything, as was the case in the García Luna era, the government in office headed by Morena has covered it up.