A crooked former Mexican governor was sentenced today to 11 years in the slammer for using American banks to launder $17 million in bribes he pocketed through a stunning corruption scheme that turned his territory into a “virtual narco-state.”
Mario Villaneuva helped the notorious Juarez drug cartel funnel massive amounts of cocaine into the United States by providing the traffickers with the assistance and protection of the state police in Quintana Roo, home to the posh beach resort of Cancun, according to the feds.
As part of the brazen racket, cartel members were even given official state police identification papers and gun permits to help them carry out their dirty business.
In exchange, Villanueva got up to $500,000 each time the violent gang — then headed by the late drug lord Amdado Carillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of the Skies” for his fleet of aircraft — moved a shipment of coke through Quintana Roo en route to the United States.
Court papers say Villaneuva let the cartel stash its planes in state-police hangers while the drugs were unloaded, then transported to safe houses, hidden in tanker trucks and smuggled across the border.
Villanueva fell under suspicion before his term ended in 1999 and he went on the lam for two years before getting nabbed by the DEA in Cancun.
Manhattan federal Judge Victor Marrero gave Villaneuva, 64, credit for about six years he served in prison in Mexico before the feds began extradition proceedings, and also knocked three years off the 20-year max he faced due to the harsh conditions he endured there.
In a rambling, bizarre statement that was cut short by the judge, Villanueva insisted that he had been framed by Mexican authorities and said his adopted daughter’s growth was stunted while she was on the run with him.
Outside court, his son, Carlos Villanueva — a former Mexican congressman and mayor of Chetumal, capital of Quintana Roo — said his dad was “absolutely innocent” of the drug allegations, and had amassed his millions from “different businesses he made,” along with an inheritance from his grandfather.
bruce.golding@nypost.com