Mexico will ask Interpol to help track down a former governor being investigated for corruption

Mexico City (AFP)Mexican authorities are seeking a former governor accused of corruption and will ask Interpol to issue an international warrant for his arrest, the interior minister said Wednesday.The whereabouts of Javier Duarte, who resigned as governor of the crime-plagued eastern state of Veracruz last week, are unknown.Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said Duarte was last seen in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, and that "security and intelligence agencies are working to locate him."The National Migration Institute has no record of him leaving the country, he said."That is why we believe that he could still be in the country," Osorio Chong told Radio Formula.A Mexican judge issued an arrest warrant and the government will also request a "red notice" from Interpol, he said.The attorney general's office is investigating Duarte on allegations of illegal enrichment, embezzlement and breach of official duty.The federal tax agency is looking into claims that his administration signed $174 million in contracts with more than 30 shell companies.Duarte has rejected the allegations and vowed to fight the charges when he resigned on October 12, less than two months before his six-year term ends.President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party suspended Duarte's party rights last month.Veracruz, an oil-rich state on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, has been marred by drug cartel violence, the murder of 19 journalists and a wave of disappearances in the past six years.SEE ALSO:A judge who handled 'El Chapo' Guzmn's extradition was killed in Mexico, and the kingpin's lawyers say he had nothing to do with itJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: Trump is going after the second-richest man in the world
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