ROME: A former Mexican state governor, arrested in Italy a year ago on suspicion of laundering drug money, was extradited to the United States on Friday, Italian police said.
Jesus Yarrington Ruvalcaba, 61, was arrested in Florence in April 2017, on the basis of two international warrants, one issued by Mexico in August 2012 and the other by the US in December 2013.
His lawyers had attempted to block his extradition, arguing that the two warrants were not valid.
Yarrington had been governor of the northern state of Tamaulipas -- where powerful drug cartels operate on the border with the US -- between 1999 and 2005.
He also harboured national political ambitions, but his party at the time, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), suffered a defeat in the presidential election in 2006.
Both the US and Mexico accuse him of having links to drug-trafficking while he was state governor. He faces jail terms of 20 years in Mexico and 90 years in the US.
He came to Italy on a fake European passport and lived for several years in the southern region of Calabria, home to the notorious 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate that is involved in a large part of cocaine trafficking in Europe.
The Italian judiciary has launched an investigation to determine whether he was helped by accomplices.