U.S. indicts Mexican governor and 9 others in scheme to aid Sinaloa drug cartel

MEXICO CITY — U.S. prosecutors accused a Mexican governor and nine other current and former Mexican officials of participating in a broad conspiracy to help a powerful Mexican cartel import drugs into the United States in exchange for bribes and votes.

In an indictment unsealed Wednesday, U.S. prosecutors said that the governor of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, had accepted bribes and help getting elected in exchange for protecting his state’s dominant criminal organization, the Sinaloa cartel, which has terrorized his constituents for years.

Prosecutors alleged that the other current and former Mexican officials — including a Mexican senator and prominent mayor — had also taken bribes to shield cartel members from arrest and feed them information.

In a statement, Rocha denied the charges as “entirely false and without foundation” and said they were an effort by the United States to violate Mexico’s sovereignty and attack its leftist political movement, which is led by President Claudia Sheinbaum.

The indictment is the Trump administration’s most significant step yet in cracking down on the government corruption that it has said is at the heart of Mexico’s cartel problem.

Rocha is the highest-ranking member of Mexico’s dominant political party, Morena, to be indicted by the United States. The move could drive a wedge between the U.S. and Mexican governments just as they are deepening cooperation on combating the cartels that have killed thousands of Mexicans and made fortunes by smuggling drugs into the United States.

Rocha, 76, is a party ally of Sheinbaum. As Rocha had faced intensifying accusations of corruption in recent months, he had been publicly backed by Morena officials.

Sheinbaum has led an aggressive campaign against Mexico’s cartels, but it has mostly focused on criminal leaders and operatives versus the elected officials they have long been shown to corrupt. She has said that her government is rooting out corruption, including by uncovering major fuel theft and tax fraud in the Mexican navy, but President Donald Trump has said that more must be done.

The other indicted officials include the current mayor of Sinaloa’s capital, Culiacán; the state’s deputy attorney general; and several former top law enforcement officials from the state.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.