César Duarte, the former governor of Chihuahua, Mexico, accused of diverting millions of dollars of public resources from the border state, was handed over to the Mexican authorities this Thursday by the Americans, who had him in custody.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) and the Attorney General's Office (FGR) reported his extradition in a statement.
[These are the properties that César Duarte bought in the United States with public money for more than 6.2 million dollars]
"This day the Government of the United States of America delivered Mr. César 'D' to the Government of Mexico for international extradition, to be prosecuted for his probable responsibility in the crimes of embezzlement and criminal association, both with aggravated penalties," they indicated. dependencies.
César Duarte, former governor of Chihuahua, in a 2012 file photo. Susan Montoya Bryan / AP
Duarte governed the neighboring state of Texas from 2010 to 2016 for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
At the end of his term, he moved to live in the United States and was arrested in Miami in 2020 thanks to an arrest warrant for extradition issued a year earlier.
Duarte will remain in the custody of the Chihuahua authorities, where his criminal trial will take place.
[This family was a follower of The Light of the World. They reported abuse against their daughter and had to flee to the US]
The governor of the entity, Maru Campos, had assured in a video in recent days that in her government
"there will be neither forgiveness nor forgetting for former governors
. "
"I celebrate that his judicial process can be carried out in Mexico so that justice can be achieved," Campos said in a statement Thursday.
Although the extradition was granted so that the state authorities judge the crimes of which he is accused, the FGR could also request that the case be brought to the federal level, the EFE news agency reported.
Thousands of Mexicans suffer the ravages of the historic drought that devastates the north of the country
April 4, 202201:42
According to the accusation, Duarte, in collaboration with other officials and with people outside the public service, “managed to carry out actions that resulted in the diversion of public resources in the amount of more than 96 million Mexican pesos (about 4.8 million dollars). extracted between the years 2011 and 2014”, indicated the Mexican Government this Thursday.
It is estimated that there are more than 40 former officials involved.
The US prosecutor's office that studied the case in Miami, where Duarte remained detained for almost two years, focused its attention on a series of reserved witnesses who worked in the Government of Chihuahua and have assured that Duarte ordered them to divert public funds for personal purposes, such as paying taxes and credit cards, The Associated Press reported.
His successor at the head of the state government, Javier Corral, of the National Action Party (PAN), assured that Duarte left behind a "wide network of corruption" and a state debt of more than 2,000 million dollars.