Maria de los Angeles Pineda, the wife of Jose Luis Abarca, former mayor of the Mexican city of Iguala where 43 college students went missing in September, has been formally charged with organized crime and money laundering.

Held under a provisional arrest, de los Angeles Pineda has now been transferred to a high security prison in the western state of Nayarit, Al-Jazeera reports.

Prosecutors assert that her brothers were in a drug gang that operated out of Iguala, Guerrero. Their accusation is, under orders from her husband, local police handed the protesting students from Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College of Ayotzinapa over to the drug gang, who then executed the students and burned their bodies.

Both Pineda and her husband, who together have been considered the masterminds behind the massacre, were arrested in November 2014.

The disappearance of the 43 students has ignited worldwide protests.

Tomas Zeron, who leads the criminal investigation unit of the prosecutor's office, said the warrant was issued for de los Angeles Pineda due to her "likely role in committing organized crime ... and operations with funds of illicit origin."

Prosecutors assert members of the drug gang linked to de los Angeles Pineda have confessed her husband ordered the police to stop the students from disrupting a political event in which she was speaking.

This contradicts the claim made by Proceso magazine and reported in the The Guardian that the political event was over by the time the students even arrived in the town.

So far, 79 people have been arrested over the missing 43 students on Sept. 26, 2014. Only one body has been identified.

According to the Daily Mail, all of de los Angeles Pineda's immediate family are either dead or behind bars because of organized crime.

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