García Luna and ‘El Rey’ Zambada met at CDMX Restaurant – El Financiero

Gennaro García Luna, former Secretary of Public Security in the government of Felipe Calderon, convicted in the United States of crimes 5 related fees With drug trafficking and his many illegal activities caught between the 60 pesos fonda menus and the expensive French food in Mexico City restaurants.

The former official and his wife, Linda Cristina Pereira, had an inn known as Santa Maria in Xochimilco (CDMX), whose official name was Los Cedros and had a branch in Cuernavaca; In addition to offering lunch menus where they sometimes mysteriously rented polygraphs, F.CHe was part of a corruption networkas reported by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) on February 9.

García Luna’s passage through CDMX restaurants also left a “bad taste in the mouth” for the official, since on February 13, Jesús ‘El Rey’ Zambada revealed during the trial that he had met García Luna twice in 2006, at the Champs-Élyseés restaurant.

In these meetings, the drug trafficker indicates that he personally gave García Luna $3 million once and $2 million on another occasion, “He said there was no problem with my brother (Almayo Zambada), who would have made sure there were no prosecutions or direct investigations.” .

This restaurant has already been in the sights of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), ever since according to the agent Miguel Madrigalwho also testified at the trial, was told by “El Grande” that he was in that place Beltrán Leyva’s cartel They handed over the money to “high-ranking officials”, although he did not specifically name names.

This was the Champs Elysées, the restaurant García Luna visited

Diners consistently called him “The Champs”. The Champs-Elysées was founded in 1965 From the Botel family in Mexico City, specializing in French gastronomy.

Its first location was at 316 Reforma Street, where it was until 2014, when they moved the restaurant to the Polanco neighborhood, to 295 Campos Elisios Street, and the place closed without explanation sometime in 2019.

It was a luxury establishment famous for b Burgundy snails (butter snails), they also served duck confit with potatoes, Argentinian veal steak, chicken breast with truffle (an expensive ingredient) and rib-eye steak with marrow sauce.

They had a whole section dedicated to caviar (beluga, osetra or sevruga) where 50g was served with mini blinis and a glass of champagne.

According to the specialized booking site The schedule is openwhich is the average of what was spent on it Champs Elysees It was 310 to 500 Mexican pesos at the time.