{"id":620374,"date":"2026-05-03T03:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/620374\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T03:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:27:08","slug":"mexican-governor-and-mayor-indicted-by-us-for-drug-trafficking-step-down-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/620374\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexican governor and mayor indicted by US for drug trafficking step down | Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two members of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum\u2019s party in the north-western Sinaloa state said they would temporarily step down from their posts after the United States charged them and eight other politicians<\/a> and security officers with drug trafficking.<\/p>\n

The bombshell indictment against the 10 has shaken Mexico\u2019s political establishment.<\/p>\n

In a short video announcement at midnight on Friday, Gov Rub\u00e9n Rocha Moya, the highest-ranking official named in the indictment, denied accusations that he protected the Sinaloa cartel and helped it smuggle vast quantities of drugs into the US in exchange for political support and millions of dollars in bribes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy conscience is clear,\u201d said Rocha, 76, a longtime ally of influential former President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador. \u201cTo my people and to my family, I can look you in the eye because I have never betrayed you, and I never will.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he said he would take a temporary leave of absence from the position he has held for six years to defend himself against what he called the \u201cfalse and malicious\u201d allegations and cooperate with the Mexican government\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n

Juan de Dios G\u00e1mez Mend\u00edvil, the mayor of the Sinaloa state capital of Culiac\u00e1n named in the indictment, also said he would take leave and denied the charges. Another defendant and member of the ruling Morena party, Senator Enrique Inzunza, said he would continue serving in the Senate while defending himself from the accusations.<\/p>\n

In a special vote Saturday, the state\u2019s local congress appointed as interim governor Yeraldine Bonilla Valverde, an ally of Rocha who previously served as the state\u2019s secretary of government. It approved Rocha\u2019s leave of absence for a period of 30 days.<\/p>\n

As serving governor and mayor, Rocha and G\u00e1mez Mend\u00edvil had enjoyed immunity from criminal prosecution. But in leaving their posts even temporarily, the officials lost their blanket protection from prosecution, Arturo Zald\u00edvar, a former Mexican supreme court justice who now advises Sheinbaum, posted on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can be detained like any person,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Sheinbaum has struggled to strike a balance<\/a> between the interests of her progressive Morena party and pressure from US President Donald Trump to step up the fight against cartels.<\/p>\n

In a nod to her party\u2019s vow to stamp out corruption, Sheinbaum said she wouldn\u2019t defend anyone found to have committed a crime.<\/p>\n

But she vigorously defended Mexico\u2019s sovereignty, saying that if federal authorities uncovered \u201cirrefutable\u201d evidence linking the 10 indicted officials to cartel crime, the accused would be tried in Mexico, not the US \u2013 a move that risks backlash from an American administration that has threatened military action against cartels on Mexican soil.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will never subordinate ourselves because this is a matter of the dignity of the Mexican people,\u201d she said Friday.<\/p>\n

Pending investigation, the Mexican attorney general\u2019s office said it would not arrest Rocha or the other accused officials, as requested by the US.<\/p>\n

Rocha, a point person for the hands-off \u201chugs not bullets\u201d approach to dealing with organised crime that L\u00f3pez Obrador pioneered and Sheinbaum has since ditched, insisted in the video that the indictment represents a political attack on Morena.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not allow myself to be used to harm the movement to which I belong \u2013 one that has improved the lives of millions of Mexican men and women,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Born in the same town as the notorious Mexican drug kingpin \u201cEl Chapo\u201d, Rocha has faced similar scandals before. In 2024, he was named in a published letter written by a then-Sinaloa cartel capo who was kidnapped by leaders of a rival faction and handed over to US law enforcement. In the letter, the capo said he was on his way to meet Rocha when he was abducted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two members of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum\u2019s party in the north-western Sinaloa state said they would temporarily step…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-620374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}