Mexico’s leader has claimed notorious drug cartel kingpin Joaquin Guzman – better known as El Chapo – wielded the power of a president up until his most recent imprisonment, Eurasia Diary reports citing Independent.

In a New Year’s speech Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office in December last year on an anti-corruption platform, celebrated his administration’s efforts to root out those in high office who were found to have been under the thumb of El Chapo’s deadly Sinaloa cartel.

"There was a time when Guzman Loera was as powerful, or had the influence, that the president had at that time," he told an audience in the southern city of Palenque. "That made it hard to punish those who had committed crimes. That is now history."

His comments come a month after the arrest of Genaro Garcia Luna, a former Mexican government official responsible for public security, was charged in the United States with accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa drug cartel once run by Guzman.

However his administration has stopped short of investigating former President Felipe Calderon, who led the country at the time and was accused of accepting a $100m bribe from the Sinaloa cartel kingpin himself in the 2019 US trial of el Chapo.