US charges governor of Mexican state of Sinaloa 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 said it received US extradition requests for "various people."

It complained that cases like this are normally handled confidentially under bilateral treaties, rather than being announced publicly first, and said it would send a note of protest to the US embassy "over the way it was announced."

The ministry said 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," attorney general spokesperson Ulises Lara said in a video posted to social media.

The governor himself denied the drug charges "categorically and absolutely" in a statement on X.

- 'Abused their authority' -

"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, in power since 2018.

Rocha Moya has governed the violence-plagued state of Sinaloa since 2021. It has been battered by a war between two factions of the cartel of the same name that has left thousands of people dead.

In Sinaloa's capital Culiacan, residents said the possible connection between the government and organized crime could be an explanation for the security crisis in the state.

"This is something that, in a certain way, we saw coming. It was unsustainable, what was going on in Sinaloa," said Miguel Taniyama, a 55-year-old restauranteur. "This explains to us a lot why the violent crime rate couldn't be lowered."

Rebeca Espinoza, 47, told AFP: "These things that we feel and sense here ended up being corroborated by a foreign government's indictment."

Rocha Moya has a long history in public life that included stints as a state congressional lawmaker in the 1980s, the head of the University of Sinaloa in the 1990s, the advisor of 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 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 said 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 US President Donald Trump's administration.