Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said judicial officials from her administration will seek to question drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada after he claimed he bribed government officials throughout the decades to advance the Sinaloa Cartel's operations.
Concretely, Sheinbaum was asked if, considering she would be meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, they could discuss sending officials from the Attorney General's office to the U.S. to question Zambada.
"We would have to ask if it's possible given the cooperation agreement," the president said during her daily press conference.
However, even if Mexico does end up sending officials, "El Mayo" giving names remains unlikely. A member of the drug lord's family reportedly said in late August that he won't "sing" or incriminate specific people.
The co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel said during his guilty plea that he bribed "military commanders and politicians who allowed us to operate freely." "It goes back to the very beginning when I was a young man starting out and it continued for all those years," he said.
Zambada changed his initial plea, considering he said he wasn't guilty in September last year. The change comes just weeks after U.S. authorities decided they will not seek the death penalty in Zambada's case, a move that appears to have catalyzed the agreement.
In addition to Zambada himself, other aging cartel figures, like Rafael Caro Quintero, were similarly spared, suggesting a broader prosecutorial strategy of encouraging plea deals. His sentencing will take place on January 13 next year.
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