Mexico is a country without laws and President López Obrador is a compulsive liar, according to the owner of a Coahuila steelmaker fighting extradition from Spain on corruption charges.
Arrested in Mallorca in May last year on charges related to the 2014 sale of a fertilizer plant to Pemex at an allegedly highly inflated price, Alonso Ancira, owner and president of Altos Hornos de México, made the claims during an extradition hearing in Madrid on Tuesday.
“There’s no justice in Mexico. Here [in Spain] justice is delivered and I congratulate you. Maintain it because in Mexico we already lost it,” Ancira told judges of the Audiencia Nacional court.
The businessman argued that if he is sent to Mexico, he has no guarantee of receiving a fair trial in a case that will examine the allegedly corrupt US $475 million sale of a disused fertilizer plant in Veracruz, a dealing in which former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya – arrested in February in the south of Spain – is also implicated.
Making clear his desire to remain in Spain, Ancira said that prisons in the European nation are like two-star hotels compared to jails in Mexico, where inmates are forced to sleep in crowded cells.
He also took aim at López Obrador, describing him as a mythomaniac, comparing him to Adolf Hitler and declaring that “he’s not an individual who is sane.”
Ancira described himself as “collateral damage” in the Mexican government’s pursuit of officials who allegedly committed acts of corruption during the administration led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
He rejected the accusation that he sold the fertilizer plant at an inflated price and charged that the case against him has no solid legal basis. The government has violated his rights to due process, legal defense and personal freedom, added Ancira, who is currently free on bail but has had his passport confiscated and is required to check in with legal authorities every other day.
The Audiencia Nacional judges will announce their response to Mexico’s extradition request within a period of 10 days, the newspaper El Universal reported, noting that Ancira will have the opportunity to file an appeal if they don’t hand down the decision he is hoping for.
Altos Hornos is Mexico’s largest integrated steelmaker.
Source: El Universal (sp)
