A former mayor of León, Guanajuato, was arrested on Thursday for embezzling close to 1.6 million pesos in 2013, about US $123,000 at the time.
Bárbara Botello Santibáñez has been accused by the state anti-corruption prosecutor of signing multi-million-peso contracts with fake businesses, or others that fulfilled no service or delivered faulty products.
She was released last night on 1.5 million pesos in bail after a judge ruled the case would go to trial.
Botello was the municipality’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) mayor between 2012 and 2015.
A Guanajuato state deputy and state PRI chairman Celeste Gómez Fragoso accused Governor Diego Sinhué Rodríguez Vallejo of conducting a “political vendetta” against Botello.
Rodríguez, of the National Action Party (PAN), responded that the arrest of the former mayor follows a two-year-old investigation that began before his administration took office in September.
Source: El Universal (sp), Proceso (sp)
