Contador assures that García Luna was on the payroll of drug traffickers

Israel Ávila, alleged accountant of the Guerrero drug trafficker Mario Pineda Villa, “MP” or “Gordo Malo”, testified in the Federal Court for the Eastern District of New York, in the trial against Genaro García Luna -former Federal Secretary of Public Safety during the Government of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa-, assuring that he recorded in his accounting books more than 10 million dollars in alleged payments to the then official, in exchange for security and information.

Mario Pineda Villa was one of the founders and former leader of the United Warriors, as well as the brother of María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, wife of José Luis Abarca Velázquez, former Mayor of Iguala, Guerreroaccused of being one of the intellectual authors of the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, which occurred in 2014.

Ávila – of whom the New York Prosecutor’s Office specifically asked not to do even illustrations, supposedly to protect his identity – described himself as a real estate agent and accountant for drug trafficking leaders.

He explained that he bought properties in Santa Fe for drug traffickers such as Arturo and Héctor Beltrán Leyva, “El Barbas” and “El H”, respectively.

Dressed in a light green prisoner’s uniform, Ávila testified that as an accountant for Pineda Villa, he recorded the income obtained from drug trafficking, as well as the expenses and payments for state, federal and municipal security services, in addition to the salaries of the workers. or renting houses and warehouses.

“I helped him make some accounting sheets in Excel”, instead of recording everything in books, with the intention that they could keep their accounting in a “more clear” way, Ávila said before the jury of the New York Court.

Questioned by the Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, the accountant specified that these payments were not direct to García Luna, but were made through other drug traffickers, among whom he cited “El Barbas”, as well as Jesús Reynaldo Zambada García -better known as “El Rey Zambada” and brother of “El Mayo”-, as well as Sergio Villarreal Barragán, “El Grande”, and Édgar Valdez Villarreal, “La Barbie”.

Ávila indicated that the highest payment he registered for García Luna was 5 million dollars, but that he also remembers payments of 3 million, one million and 1.8 million.

He also said that instead of registering the name of the then federal official, “El Statamudo” and “El Metralleta” were written next to the payments, nicknames with which some drug traffickers referred to the then head of the SSP.

In addition, the accountant recalled a payment of 500,000 dollars that he allegedly made in person to Luis Ángel Cabeza de Vaca Rodríguez, then Secretary of Public Security of Morelos, who in the account books was identified by the nickname “El de los Cuernos” , “The Head” or “Cow”.

Ávila also recounted that after the death of “MP” and his brother Alberto Pineda Villa, “El Borrado”, in 2009, he worked, among others, for the Beltrán Leyva Cartel and for “El Grande”, in addition to being detained for a trip to Texas, in 2012.

Likewise, the accountant acknowledged that he carried out other tasks for his bosses, such as participation in kidnappings and torture, for which he was sentenced in an Illinois Federal Court to 15 years in prison and expects to be released at the end of 2025.

The accountant also indicated that at one point he thought he was working for the Federal Investigation Agency -dependent on the extinct Attorney General’s Office, which García Luna directed between 2001 and 2006-, but that after a murder in a private home that rented for the Pineda Villa, asked “The MP” if they worked for a federal official, to which the Guerrero boss replied that “he works for us” and for the Cartel de Sinaloa.

Ávila confirmed what “El Grande” said during his testimony, regarding the operation against “El Rey” Zambada García, in the sense that members of the Beltrán Leyva participated, among them Villarreal Barragán and the Pineda Villa brothers, disguised as elements of the AFI.

The accountant also endorsed what Villarreal Barragán said, that the Beltrán Leyvas feared that the agents of the Mexican security forces wanted to “change” the brother of “El Mayo” for another.

But he gave additional information to what “El Grande” reported, that the Beltrán Leyva family asked him to contact a “journalist who worked for the cartel” to filter the news and the photograph, which they took to prevent themselves, of “El Rey Zambada”, which the communicator supposedly did, whose name was omitted.