MEXICO CITY — Cancun would rather be known for powdery beaches and blue waters, but on Wednesday, it was the scene of an explosive corruption scandal: Did its mayor secretly work on behalf of two bloodthirsty drug-trafficking organizations?
The charges against Mayor Gregorio Sanchez, who is on leave to run for governor of the state of Quintana Roo, add force to worries that organized crime groups have infiltrated politics at all levels and are undermining fragile moves toward a real democracy.
Sanchez, who cultivated the image of a populist, anti-corruption mayor, was arrested late Tuesday night at Cancun’s airport on suspicion of involvement in organized crime, money laundering and making transactions using illegal proceeds.
He is the most visible elected figure held on drug-related charges since President Felipe Calderon launched his war on traffickers 3 1/2 years ago.
Federal authorities said Wednesday that Sanchez provided information and protection to the Zetas and Beltran Leyva gangs to help them ply their trade in the region. Officials found that Sanchez, a former resort builder in his early 40s, was moving funds through his accounts in sums far bigger than his reported income of $1.5 million, said Ricardo Najera, spokesman for the federal attorney general.
An amateur singer, Sanchez won support from many Cancun residents for firing corrupt police, and he likes to boast of his public-works projects, including turning trash-strewn lots in scruffy neighborhoods into parks.
Sanchez, who was endorsed by a coalition of leftist parties, is the first person in recent memory to be arrested in the midst of a gubernatorial campaign in Mexico. Early polls showed him trailing in Quintana Roo, one of 14 states that will hold elections July 4.
Supporters from Sanchez’s opposition Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, claimed that the arrest was an election-season stunt by the government of conservative Calderon to deny him Quintana Roo’s top office.
Sanchez’s supporters disparaged the arrest as a “Michoacanazo,” referring to the Calderon government’s arrests during last year’s election season of more than two dozen public officials — mostly from the PRD — in the western state of Michoacan for alleged ties to organized crime. Nine of the 10 mayors arrested were later freed for lack of evidence.
“This is a political prosecution. There is no other word for it,” Sanchez’s wife, Niurka Saliva, told reporters.
