MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two members of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s party in northwestern Sinaloa state said they would temporarily step down from their posts after the United States charged them and eight other serving and former politicians and security officers with drug trafficking in a bombshell indictment that has shaken Mexico’s political establishment.
In a short video announcement posted at midnight Friday, Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya, the highest-ranking official named in the indictment, denied accusations that he protected the powerful Sinaloa cartel and helped it smuggle drugs into the U.S. in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.
“My conscience is clear,” said Rocha, a prominent ally of Sheinbaum’s mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “To my people and to my family, I can look you in the eye because I have never betrayed you, and I never will.”
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 “false and malicious” allegations and cooperate with the Mexican government’s investigation.
Juan de Dios Gámez Mendívil, the mayor of the Sinaloa state capital Culiacán named in the indictment, also said he would take leave and denied the charges. The city’s comptroller became interim mayor on Saturday.
