New York (AFP) – The US Justice Department on Wednesday charged the governor of the Mexican state of Sinaloa and other officials with drug trafficking. The US attorney for the Southern District of New York said 10 people, including Governor Ruben Rocha Moya, are accused of working with the Sinaloa cartel to distribute “massive quantities” of narcotics to the United States.
Without mentioning the indictment, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry stated that it received US extradition requests for “various people.” It expressed concern that cases like this are normally handled confidentially under bilateral treaties, rather than being announced publicly first, and indicated it would send a note of protest to the US embassy “over the way it was announced.” The ministry also mentioned that the Mexican attorney general’s office will decide whether to extradite Rocha Moya and the other suspects to the United States.
Later Wednesday, Mexican authorities announced their own investigation to determine if “the accusation made by US authorities has legal grounds,” said attorney general spokesperson Ulises Lara in a video posted to social media. The governor himself denied the drug charges “categorically and absolutely” in a statement on X.
“This attack isn’t only against me, it’s against the Fourth Transformation,” Rocha Moya said, referring to Mexico’s governing, left-leaning Morena party, which has been in power since 2018. Rocha Moya has governed the conflictive state of Sinaloa since 2021. The region has been battered by a war between two factions of the cartel of the same name, which has left thousands of people dead.
The governor has a long history in public life that includes stints as a state congressional lawmaker in the 1980s, the head of the University of Sinaloa in the 1990s, an advisor to two governors in the 2000s, and then a state coordinator for Morena. The officials accused alongside Rocha Moya include a senator for Morena, the municipal president of the state capital of Culiacan, and the deputy prosecutor for the state attorney general’s office.
“These politicians and law enforcement officials have abused their authority in support of the cartel, exposed and subjected victims to threats and violence,” the US indictment reads. It stated that the defendants were mostly aligned with a faction of the Sinaloa cartel known as the ‘Chapitos,’ loyal to the sons of cartel co-founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in the United States. The Sinaloa Cartel is one of six Mexican narcotrafficking groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
© 2024 AFP
