The General Prosecutor's Office (FGR) arrested former Chihuahua governor César Duarte on Monday, December 8, 2025, for the crime of operations with illicit funds. The arrest warrant, issued in May 2024, required U.S. authorization, granted on December 4, 2025. The charge relates to a money laundering scheme involving diverted public funds during his tenure.
César Duarte Jáquez, who governed Chihuahua from 2010 to 2016 for the PRI, now faces a new federal process independent of the state charges for which he was extradited in 2022. The FGR, under Ernestina Godoy's direction, executed the arrest after obtaining U.S. approval, respecting the extradition's principle of specialty. According to the official statement, Duarte allegedly diverted state funds and introduced them into the Mexican financial system to give them an appearance of legality.
Duarte's judicial history includes his arrest on July 8, 2020, in Miami, Florida, at Chihuahua's request for embezzlement and criminal association, related to the diversion of 96 million pesos between 2011 and 2014. Extradited on June 2, 2022, he was imprisoned in Aquiles Serdán prison and given preventive detention on June 6. In June 2024, a local judge granted him conditional release with an electronic bracelet as the preventive detention period expired without a sentence.
In June 2025, a judge in El Paso, Texas, dismissed a civil lawsuit filed by former governor Javier Corral, who accused Duarte of buying U.S. properties with public funds; the ruling found no evidence after FBI and other agency investigations. Duarte was later seen at a bar in Chihuahua celebrating the decision. This civil case does not affect the criminal proceedings in Mexico, and the FGR continues investigating federal crimes distinct from those in the extradition.