Tamaulipas, Mexico - The US has deported to Mexico a former governor who had been jailed on money laundering charges in Texas, Mexican authorities said Wednesday.

Tomas Yarrington, who was the governor of the border state of Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2005, had been sentenced to nine years in prison in the US after being arrested in Italy in 2017 at the request of American and Mexican authorities.

He was found guilty of accepting $3.5 million in bribes while serving as governor and laundered the funds in the US by buying luxury properties there.

"Even if you are governor of a Mexican state, we will not stand idly by when you use your position to wrongfully fill your pockets and violate the laws of the United States," US prosecutor Alamdar Hamdani said at the time.

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Yarrington is being held in a maximum security prison in Mexico near the capital, a federal source told AFP, asking not to be identified because he was not authorized to comment.

Authorities have not detailed the crimes against Yarrington in Mexico, although he had been accused in 2009 of alleged links to drug trafficking and money laundering.