The husband of Public Administration Minister Irma Sandoval says that he will sue a journalist who revealed information about his and his wife’s real estate assets.
Journalist Carlos Loret de Mola claimed last week that Sandoval and her husband John Ackerman own six properties worth as much as 60 million pesos (US $2.7 million). He also charged that land on which one of the properties sits in Mexico City was gifted to Sandoval in 2007 by the Mexico City government.
The minister promptly rejected Loret’s estimation of the value of the properties and denied his claim that she received a parcel of land as a gift.
Now, Ackerman, a professor and researcher at the National Autonomous University (UNAM), has accused Loret of libel and invading his and his wife’s privacy.
In a document entitled “The lies of Loret,” he asserted that the journalist disseminated “false and confidential” information that places the safety of his whole family at risk.
Ackerman described Loret as a “professional mythomaniac,” or compulsive liar, and charged that his report hadn’t “discovered anything about anyone.”
The [assets] declaration of the public administration minister is in order “and she reports all … of our assets with complete precision,” he wrote.
“Loret’s report presents this information dishonestly (magically transforming apartments and a plot of land into ‘houses,’ for example), resorts to images that don’t at all correspond to reality and offers fanciful interpretations about the origin of the assets,” Ackerman said.
The UNAM academic claimed that Loret had illegal access to the private version of Sandoval’s assets declaration and as a result publicly disseminated “sensitive and confidential” information that includes the couple’s address and its “physical appearance.”
Such information is not included in the public version of officials’ assets declarations in order to protect their safety and that of their families, he said.
Asserting that a “serious” crime had been committed, Ackerman said that he would file criminal complaints in both Mexico and the United States so that the people responsible for both the leaking and dissemination “of our personal details” are investigated and punished.
Loret made his accusations in a YouTube program he makes for LatinUs, a news website that operates in both Mexico and the United States.
Ackerman also said he would hold Loret responsible for any aggression or extortion his family might suffer as a result of his “irresponsible and criminal report.”
He asserted that his family’s properties were purchased with “savings we were able to accumulate during decades of work” as well as a “generous prize” Sandoval won in a “prestigious” academic competition in 2009.
Source: La Jornada (sp)
