Former Mexico governor extradited to US to face drug charges

The former governor of the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas has been extradited from Italy to the United States to face charges of racketeering, drug smuggling, money laundering and bank fraud.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brownsville, Texas, announced Friday that Italy had extradited 61-year-old Tomas Yarrington Ruvalcaba after detaining him on April 8.

From 1999 to February 2005, Ruvalcaba was governor of Tamaulipas, which is one of Mexico’s most violent states and borders Texas to the north and the Gulf of Mexico to the east.

A May 2013 indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Brownsville, Texas, accused Yarrington of accepting huge bribes from major drug traffickers operating in his state, including the Gulf Cartel.

In return, he’s accused of allowing the traffickers to operate freely, smuggling tons of narcotics into the United States.

He’s also accused of involvement in cocaine smuggling from 2007 to 2009.