MEXICO CITY, Mexico—Mexico's Office of Transparency and Data Protection announced Thursday an investigation into President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's disclosure of a journalist's telephone number at his daily press briefing.
López Obrador revealed the number to a New York Times reporter while reading questions related to a newspaper report it published about his alleged drug cartel links to associates.
The National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection said it would investigate whether the disclosure broke the law.
The controversy has raised alarm among media rights activists in one of the world's most dangerous countries for newspapers, weeks after the personal information of journalists held by the Mexican government was leaked.
The New York Times described the incident as "an alarming and unacceptable tactic from a world leader at a time of rising threats against journalists."
On Thursday, the newspaper reported that US law enforcement officials have spent years looking into allegations that people close to López Obrador took millions of dollars from the criminal gang.
The United States decided not to launch a formal investigation because "there was little appetite to pursue allegations against the leader of one of America's top allies," the article said.
While US officials identified possible links between drug cartels and people close to López Obrador, they found no direct link between the president himself and the criminal group, it said, citing US records and unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
According to the newspaper, the information was difficult to confirm as most of it came from informants.
López Obrador described the allegations as "slander" and called on the US government to respond.
"If they don't want to say anything, if they don't want to act with transparency, that's their business, but any democratic government, defender of freedom, should inform people about their demands," he said.
This is the second time this year that López Obrador, who took office in 2018, has faced such claims in US media.
Last month, he denied allegations in an article published on the ProPublica news site that drug traffickers helped finance his first presidential campaign in 2006.
The report said it was unclear whether López Obrador -- who narrowly lost the race -- sanctioned or was even aware of the funds.
He described the allegations as "absolutely false" and portrayed the claims as a political attack by his opponents ahead of the presidential election in June, which he hopes to see his close ally Claudia Sheenbaum win.
