Mexican investigators have found no evidence that sitting Mexican politicians or military commanders are collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday.
“We don’t have at this time any proof against any public servant, or member of the Army [or] Navy,” Sheinbaum responded Wednesday when asked about allegations from Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel.
But she vowed that Mexico would prosecute any officials found to be on cartel payrolls. “We won’t cover up for anyone,” the president said at her regular morning news conference.
Upon entering a guilty plea Monday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, Zambada cited a decades-long culture of official graft as essential to the success of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world’s richest crime syndicates.
“The organization I led promoted corruption in my home country by paying police, military commanders and politicians,” Zambada, 75, declared, in comments widely publicized in Mexico. “It goes back to the very beginning when I was a young man starting out, and it continued for all these years.”
Read more: Cartel boss ‘El Mayo’ pleads guilty. Will he spill secrets about corruption in Mexico?
Zambada’s comments—citing cartel payoffs across the rule of all major Mexican political parties — added yet another layer of corroboration to what has long been public knowledge: Organized crime has thrived thanks to collaboration with Mexican lawmakers, cops and soldiers.
In comments Monday, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said that Zambada “operated with impunity at the highest level of the Mexican drug trafficking world, by paying bribes to government officials, by bribing law enforcement officers.”
Zambada’s charges come at an extremely sensitive moment, as the Trump administration weighs the possibility of unilateral U.S. military strikes against cartel targets. Sheinbaum has said repeatedly that her government views any unilateral U.S. action on Mexican territory as an egregious violation of sovereignty.
Zambada’s comments in court have reverberated in Mexico, where Sheinbaum marks her first year in office on Oct. 1.
Commentators have speculated about whether Zambada’s case and those of other alleged high-level traffickers in U.S. custody—including two sons of the imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada’s former partner in founding the Sinaloa gang — may produce fresh corruption allegations against so-called “narco-politicians, including members of Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena political bloc.
Critics here have assailed Sheinbaum’s government for not moving to prosecute Morena big-wigs with purported ties to organized crime.
Read more: Case of ‘El Chapo’ son cooperating with U.S. prosecutors roils Mexico
“Mexico was once again shown to be a country without rule of law,” wrote columnist Pascal Beltrán del Río in the Mexican daily Excélsior, following the announcement of Zambada’s plea. “If Mexico does nothing … it runs the risk that the United States—out of its own interests—will begin to take in hand the arsenal of information that El Mayo and the rest of the captive capos are surely providing.”
Sheinbaum regularly touts what she calls an ongoing cartel crackdown. She has dispatched thousands of troops to Mexico’s northern border with the United States, jailed hundreds of alleged trafficking operatives and turned over dozens of suspects over to U.S. authorities. Her political rivals say it’s mostly show to appease the Trump administration.
While no current lawmakers or military brass had been implicated in corruption, some municipal and state police had been tied to cartel activity, Omar García Harfuch, Sheinbaum’s security chief, told reporters.
“If an investigation shows any politician or public functionary linked to any criminal group, the complaint would be presented and an investigation started,” said García Harfuch, whose official title is secretary of security and civilian protection. “But we don’t have any proof at this time.”
Zambada was arrested by U.S. authorities last year during the final year of the administration of ex-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and founder of the ruling Morena political party.
Jeffrey Lichtman, the attorney representing El Chapo’s sons in their U.S. cases, has explicitly called out Sheinbaum in recent weeks, alleging that she has been “acting as… the public relations arm of the Zambada drug trafficking organization.” Sheinbaum subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against Lichtman in a Mexican court. Lichtman fired back in a post on Instagram, calling the president’s lawsuit “a cheap effort to score political points.”
Sheinbaum has insisted that official corruption has largely ended since López Obrador took office in 2018—an assertion dismissed as absurd by opposition lawmakers. López Obrador repeatedly rejected allegations that drug-trafficking money helped fund several of his political campaigns, but he charged that graft was rampant in past administrations.
The most notorious case was that of Genaro García Luna, a former federal security chief who is serving a 38-year prison term in the United States after his conviction for receiving millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. García Luna served under former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, political arch-enemy of López Obrador.
As part of his plea agreement, U.S. authorities said, Zambada also agreed to hand over $15 billion in alleged drug-trade proceeds generated since the 1980s. While experts said it’s unlikely that the massive sum will ever be collected, Sheinbaum said Wednesday that Mexico would demand a part of any such haul “for the people of Mexico.”
Read more: Boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. released from prison in Mexico, awaiting trial over alleged cartel ties
Many questions still remain about the mysterious operation that culminated in the arrest of Zambada in July 2024.
Sheinbaum has complained that Washington has yet to provide any clarification about the sequence of events that led to Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López— a son of El Chapo Guzmán—being flown from Mexico to the United States. Two two were arrested outside El Paso, Texas, after arriving on a private plane that reportedly took off from outside Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state.
Zambada has said that he was set up and kidnapped by Guzmán López, a former head of the Sinaloa cartel faction known as Los Chapitos.
Ken Salazar, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, told reporters last year that Zambada was brought to the United States against his will — but that no U.S. personnel, resources or aircraft were involved. U.S. authorities were “surprised” when Zambada and Guzmán turned up on the U.S. side of the border, Salazar told reporters.
But Mexican officials are skeptical. They suspect that Washington orchestrated the entire operation, likely enlisting the support of El Chapo’s son to abduct Zambada and transport him to U.S. territory.
The apparent kidnapping of Zambada triggered a bloody civil war within the Sinaloa cartel—pitting Zambada loyalists against supporters of Los Chapitos— that has left hundreds dead. The intra-cartel struggle continues to claim casualties in Sinaloa state.
Staff writer Keegan Hamilton in Brooklyn and special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
