Mexican authorities arrest Cancun mayor on drug, money laundering charges

Mexico arrests Cancun mayor on drug charges

CANCUN, Mexico — Mexican federal police have arrested the mayor of the resort city of Cancun on drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime charges.

Gregorio Sanchez, who took a leave of absence from his mayoral post to run for governor of the Caribbean coastal state of Quintana Roo, was taken into custody at Cancun’s international airport after arriving on a flight from Mexico City.

While Mexico’s 2010 elections have been marred by violence and allegations of drug cartel involvement, officials said they could not immediately remember another case in which a gubernatorial candidate has been arrested on drug charges.

“This takes us all by surprise, it is unprecedented,” said current Quintana Roo Gov. Felix Gonzalez Cantu.

Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the federal Attorney General’s Office, said the charges allege Sanchez played a role in fomenting or aiding drug trafficking.

Sanchez’s website published an article in which the candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party and two smaller parties said he was being persecuted for political reasons.

The site quoted Sanchez as saying he had been threatened. “Resign from the race, or we are going to put you in jail or kill you,” Sanchez said in describing one of the threats.

A Twitter account linked to the site vowed to continue Sanchez’s campaign and asked people to protest his arrest and vote for him.

Sanchez, a populist who pledged to bring services to the impoverished majority of residents who live on the outskirts of the glittering resort, took on the established and entrenched political machine of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The political fight in the state has been bitter — soldiers discovered two apartments fitted out with equipment for telephone eavesdropping, that local media said may be linked to political espionage. But drug cartels have long been active in the state, as well.

In 2009, prosecutors arrested Cancun’s police chief, Francisco Velasco, to investigate whether he protected the Zetas drug gang.

Velasco had already been detained for questioning in the killing of retired Brig. Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello, whose bullet-riddled body was found in a car in early 2009, shortly after the Cancun city government hired him as a security consultant to combat local corruption and asked him to set up the elite force.

Quintana Roo state, where Cancun is located, has seen its share of officials detained for allegedly aiding drug cartels, including a former governor who was arrested just after he left office and sentenced to 36 years for money laundering and helping a drug cartel smuggle narcotics.

Bundles of cocaine sometimes wash ashore in the region because smugglers drop drugs from boats or small planes for gangs to retrieve and move into the U.S.

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AP Writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this report