The former Pemex CEO who is wanted for money laundering is going to tell all in the next few weeks with a video revealing the corruption that took place at the state oil company while he was in charge.
Emilio Lozoya, who was CEO from 2012 until 2016 and an advisor to former president Enrique Peña Nieto before that, will implicate his former boss and Luis Videgaray, who held the foreign affairs and finance portfolios in the Peña Nieto government, his lawyer said.
Javier Coello Trejo said his client will release a video and “tell the story about exactly how everything happened. He’s going to tell it all, because he knows it perfectly well.”
He said Lozoya will reveal the truth behind the accusations he faces related to Pemex’s purchase of several fertilizer plants, and will implicate Peña Nieto, as well as other government secretaries, in the looting of the oil company.
“They were the ones who looted Pemex,” he said. “I’m not saying they stole the money, but that they took it to the treasury.”
The looting, Coello said, consisted of official tolerance for fuel theft and declines in petroleum and natural gas production.
Lozoya is wanted for money laundering in relation to an alleged overpayment by Pemex for the fertilizer plants, which include the Agro Nitrogenados plant purchased from steelmaker Altos Hornos de México and the Fertinal plant in Michoacán.
Lozoya is also accused of receiving bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. Warrants for his arrest were issued in May.
Coello reiterated yesterday that Lozoya will not turn himself in.
“We are going to litigate this; using the law, we are going to prove that the accusations about Agro Nitrogenados and Odebrecht aren’t true, and we’re going to point out who was really involved in the purchase of Fertinal.”
Coello added that the arrest of Lozoya’s mother last week in Germany was an attempt to pressure Lozoya to turn himself in.
Source: El Economista (sp), El Universal (sp)
