The businessman from Monterrey Raúl Rocha Cantú, president of Miss Universe Mexico, faces an arrest warrant for leading a network involved in fuel theft (huachicol), arms trafficking, and drug trafficking from Guatemala
Raúl Rocha Cantú, the 47-year-old businessman from Nuevo León and president of the Miss Universe Organization in Mexico, is at the center of a federal investigation that directly links him to organized crime.
Rocha, who acquired 50% of the pageant’s rights in 2023 for 16 million dollars through his holding company Legacy Group, signed a contract that same year with Pemex for nearly 750 million pesos through his company Soluciones Gasíferas del Sur S.A. de C.V.—a detail that now takes on sinister overtones in light of the accusations made by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR).
The Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (FEMDO) issued an arrest warrant against Rocha at the request of a federal judge in Querétaro, for his alleged responsibility in organized crime offenses related to drug trafficking, illicit arms trafficking, and theft of hydrocarbons (huachicol).
The criminal network attributed to him operates on the southern border, crossing the Usumacinta River in speedboats from Guatemala into Chiapas and Tabasco, then distributing the spoils in tanker trucks toward the Bajío region and Mexico City.
Among the final buyers are cells of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in Querétaro and La Unión Tepito in the capital—groups that have sown terror with their indiscriminate violence, funded precisely by these illicit flows.
The investigation, initiated in 2024 following an anonymous complaint filed on November 29, also implicates more than a dozen accomplices, including high-ranking officials from the FGR itself, such as prosecutor Mari Carmen Ramírez Rodríguez, alias “La Fiscal,” and commander Paul Manrique Miranda, “El Comandante,” who allegedly facilitated the operation by infiltrating the institution.
The timing of the scandal could not be more revealing of the systemic rot in Claudia Sheinbaum’s government, heir to Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s so-called “republican austerity.”
On November 15, 2025, just hours before the grand finale of Miss Universe at the Cancún Convention Center—where Fátima Bosch from Monterrey, daughter of a high-ranking Pemex executive, was crowned the new queen—Rocha reached an agreement with the FGR to enter the protected witness program.
This legal mechanism, which in theory seeks to dismantle criminal networks in exchange for partial immunity, allowed the businessman to avoid imminent imprisonment by paying millions to gain access to privileged information and turn in his associates.
It is no coincidence: the event, which drew thousands of tourists and generated millions in revenue for a Mexico suffocating under insecurity, was shielded from this scandal so as not to tarnish the official narrative of “transformation.”
This selective impunity exposes the cracks in the leftist model that promised to eradicate corruption but has in fact nurtured it within the bowels of Pemex, the epicenter of industrial-scale fuel theft that bleeds billions from the public treasury.
Rocha, who also held the position of Honorary Consul of Mexico in Guatemala until his revocation in October 2025 due to administrative irregularities, embodies the archetype of the untouchable businessman: casinos, gas stations, and now international beauty pageants—all stained with blood and stolen fuel.
While the left in power celebrates “achievements” such as Bosch’s coronation—whose family connection to Pemex reeks of blatant favoritism—Mexico continues to bleed from the open wounds of narcoterrorism fed by these midnight deals.
The Rocha case is a symptom of a captured State where glamour conceals filth. We demand real justice, not pacts that protect the big fish while citizens pay the price of insecurity. Only a change of course, far from progressive hypocrisy, will be able to clean up this sewer.
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