Indicted Sinaloa Governor Steps Aside After One Day
Indicted Sinaloa Governor Steps Aside After One Day
The News
Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya — indicted in the United States on charges he took bribes to protect the Sinaloa cartel — has reversed his return to office about a day and a half after announcing it, bowing to a backlash from his own ruling party.
State lawmakers were expected Sunday to approve his request for an indefinite leave of absence, the Associated Press reported.
The collapse of his comeback followed a public rebuke from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and a coordinated wave of criticism from Morena governors, senators and party leaders.
Timeline
Federal prosecutors in New York unseal an indictment accusing Rocha Moya and nine other current and former Mexican officials of protecting Sinaloa cartel members in exchange for bribes as they trafficked fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States.
Rocha Moya, 77, steps aside, saying he wants to cooperate with the Mexican investigation without relying on the constitutional immunity attached to his office. He denies wrongdoing and calls the charges a politically motivated attack.
After nearly four months on leave, he announces he is returning, saying Mexico's Attorney General's Office found "no evidence to support our participation in any criminal conduct." He declares he is back "as governor of Sinaloa with my head held high."
Sheinbaum and Morena figures publicly push back. Later that day, Rocha Moya asks the state legislature to let him step aside indefinitely.
State lawmakers are expected to approve the request.
Reactions
Sheinbaum, without naming him, wrote Saturday: "No personal interest can ever come before the interests of the people and the nation." She added that "Mexico deserves public servants who understand that positions are temporary, but responsibility to the nation is eternal."
Morena said its national leadership had no advance knowledge of the return and called it his "personal decision." The party's Senate bloc urged respect for the ongoing investigation, and Morena governors said in a joint statement that "personal or group political projects have no place" when the country's interests are at stake.
Ricardo Monreal, Morena's leader in the lower house of Congress and a longtime ally, publicly urged Rocha Moya to reconsider and stay on leave.
Announcing his retreat, Rocha Moya wrote: "Sinaloa, the nation and the transformation movement come first."
What's Next
The state legislature's vote on the indefinite leave was the immediate step. Whether stepping aside strips Rocha Moya of the immunity attached to his office remains disputed among Mexican legal scholars, according to the AP.
The U.S. case is unresolved. Sheinbaum has denied shielding Rocha Moya but rejected Washington's request to arrest and extradite the defendants without what she considers credible evidence, insisting any prosecution happen in Mexico.
More
The indictment was the Trump administration's most significant public action against what it calls official corruption enabling Mexico's cartels, and it has fueled new tension between the two governments. President Donald Trump has said cartels control Mexico and has repeatedly offered U.S. military help to fight them — an offer Sheinbaum's movement, wary of American intervention, resists.
After the indictment, the mayor of Culiacán, Sinaloa's capital, and the state's deputy attorney general also left their posts, and two former senior state officials surrendered to U.S. authorities.
Sinaloa has been engulfed for nearly two years in a bloody conflict between rival factions of the cartel that bears the state's name.
Sources: Associated Press, Fox News, The Washington Times, Breitbart News, Reuters via Yahoo News.
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