The stunning testimony was delivered Tuesday in a New York courtroom by Alex Cifuentes Villa, a Colombian drug lord who worked closely with Guzmán from 2007 to 2013, when the kingpin was hiding from the law at a series of remote ranches in the Sierra Madre.
“Mr. Guzmán paid a bribe of $100 million to President Peña Nieto?” Jeffrey Lichtman, one of Guzmán’s lawyers, asked Cifuentes during cross-examination.
“Yes,” Cifuentes said.
Guzmán may offer more details soon. Shortly after the jury was excused around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Lichtman submitted his client’s name to the prosecution as a potential witness for the defense, an indication that the drug trafficker might testify in his own trial.
According to Cifuentes, Peña Nieto first reached out to Guzmán about the time he was elected president in late 2012, asking the drug lord for $250 million in exchange for calling off a nationwide manhunt for him.
But Guzmán made a counteroffer, Cifuentes added, saying he would give Peña Nieto only $100 million.
“The message was that Mr. Guzmán didn’t have to stay in hiding?” Lichtman asked.
“Yes,” Cifuentes said, “that very thing is what Joaquin said to me.”
Lichtman, quoting Cifuentes’ notes from an interview he gave to U.S. authorities in 2016, asked whether Felipe Calderón, who preceded Peña Nieto as Mexico’s president, took a bribe in 2008 from one of Guzmán’s rivals, the Beltrán-Leyva brothers.
“I don’t recall this incident very well,” Cifuentes answered. He added moments later, “Right now, I do not remember that.”
Peña Nieto and Calderón could not yet be reached for comment.
While other witnesses at Guzmán’s trial in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn have testified about huge payoffs from traffickers to the Mexican police and public officials, the testimony about Peña Nieto was the most egregious allegation yet. If true, it suggests corruption by drug cartels had reached into the highest level of Mexico’s political establishment.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.