A federal judge has issued an arrest warrant against former Nayarit governor Roberto Sandoval Castañeda and his daughter, Lidy Alejandra Sandoval López, for money laundering and links to organized crime. The Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) will request the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to issue a Red Notice for their arrest. This is the second arrest warrant issued against the former governor. In May 2019, he was placed on the U.S. Kingpin List for corruption and accepting bribes from the Cartel Jalisco Nuevo Generacion (CJNG).

According to a federal investigation, during his tenure as governor of Nayarit, from 2011 to 2017, Sandoval Castañeda and the former Nayarit State Attorney General Édgar Veytia were associated with illicit activities, including kidnapping, extortion, dispossession, robbery, threats, illegal enrichment, and homicide. The investigation also cites that the former governor’s daughter paid for three properties in cash while reporting insufficient income.

Veytia was arrested in San Diego in March 2017, and in 2019 was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of drug trafficking and offering protection to the H-2 Cartel. Veytia reportedly provided the H-2 Cartel, led by Francisco Patron Sánchez, operator for the Beltrán Leyva Organization in Nayarit, with protection in exchange for monthly bribes. He also directed other corrupt Mexican law enforcement officers to aid the cartel beginning in 2013 and used them as back channels to receive and send messages to Patron Sanchez.

In November 2020, an arrest warrant was issued against Sandoval Castañeda on charges of embezzlement, improper exercise of official duty, and accepting bribes from the CJNG, Los Cuinis, and the Cartel de Los Beltran Leyva in exchange for favorable court sentences. The Ministry of Finance’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) froze 42 bank accounts linked to the former governor totaling over a billion pesos (over USD 59 million).

He remains on the run. If charged, he could face up to 20 years in prison and could be required to reimburse the state upward of MXN 20 million (USD 980,000), according to judicial officials.