Nearly two months after Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya was indicted by the U.S. on allegations of ties to the Sinaloa cartel and its Los Chapitos faction, little information has emerged about the case.
Rocha Moya appeared before Mexico's Attorney General's Office in May and that same month he requested a temporary leave of absence while facing the charges against him. Despite the Mexican government saying it is monitoring Rocha Moya, his whereabouts remain unknown.
But according to Mexican journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio, Rocha Moya is living on a ranch nearly 70 miles north of Culiacán, Sinaloa, where he reportedly relocated almost immediately after the United States unveiled the drug trafficking charges against him.
In his column called Estrictamente Personal, Riva Palacio wrote that Rocha Moya rarely leaves the ranch except for essential matters, including occasional trips to Mexico City. He claims that since April 29, when the indictment was unsealed, Rocha Moya has had only one phone call with President Claudia Sheinbaum, who allegedly questioned how Gen. Gerardo Mérida Sánchez, one of the individuals named in the U.S. indictment, was able to cross the border and offer himself as a cooperating witness.
Rocha Moya is not the only person reportedly being monitored by the Mexican government. According to Riva Palacio, Enrique Inzunza, a senator from Morena, Mexico's ruling party, and another figure identified by U.S. authorities as having alleged links to Los Chapitos, has made few public appearances and continues to live in Culiacán, according to the journalist.
Last month, Mexico's top security official, Omar García Harfuch, said Rocha Moya was in Sinaloa and did not have federal security protection, but rather a state-provided security detail.
"At the moment, he is there in his state. He does not have an escort service from any protection institution of the Government of Mexico. He has state police, as we understand it. Security is provided by the state," he said, according to Infobae México.
The indictment, unveiled by the U.S. government on April 29, accuses Rocha Moya of receiving support from Los Chapitos to win the governorship and, once in office, allowed violence to continue unchecked while protecting cartel leaders and their drug trafficking operations.
Prosecutors say the alleged corruption extended to local law enforcement agencies, including the Sinaloa State Police, the state attorney general's investigative police and the Culiacán municipal police, which they accuse of protecting drug trafficking operations in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.
