Genaro Garcia Luna, the official who for several years led Mexico’s fight against the country’s violent drug trade, was sentenced to more than 38 years in US prison for accepting bribes from the cartels he was supposed to fight.

The US district judge Brian Cogan announced the sentence at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.

Prosecutors had urged a life sentence for Garcia Luna, 56, after he was convicted at trial in February 2023 for engaging in a criminal drug enterprise, taking part in various conspiracies and making false statements.

They argued Garcia Luna took millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel once led by Joaquin Guzman Loera, better known as El Chapo, and in exchange shielded its members from arrest and protected its cocaine shipments.

In announcing the 460-month sentence, Cogan said Garcia Luna should have “some light at the end of the tunnel”, crediting him for his work teaching fellow inmates at Brooklyn’s metropolitan detention center. But the judge said Garcia Luna lived a “double life”, with the harm he caused outweighing his good deeds.

“Aside from your very pleasant demeanor and your articulateness, you have the same kind of thuggishness as El Chapo, it just manifests itself differently,” Cogan said.

Garcia Luna served as Mexico’s public security minister from 2006 to 2012.

His defense lawyer Cesar de Castro had suggested Cogan should sentence him to no longer than the mandatory minimum of 20 years, noting he has already spent nearly five years in jail since his 2019 arrest.

The defense had argued at trial that the former Sinaloa cartel members who cooperated with prosecutors and testified against Garcia Luna had falsely implicated him to try to reduce their own sentences.

Before learning the sentence, Garcia Luna said in court that Mexico’s government and criminal groups had smeared him. “I have not committed any of these crimes,” he said. “I am not the person that the criminals point to.”

El Chapo is serving a life sentence at a Colorado maximum security prison after being convicted in 2019 on drug charges.