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Gang boss created elaborate criminal infrastructure in Guanajuato town

February 17, 2020

One of many houses owned by the cartel boss.

Fugitive cartel leader José Antonio Yépez Ortiz built infrastructure in a small Guanajuato town and the surrounding area that was specifically designed to aid and abet his criminal activities and help him avoid capture.

Santa Rosa de Lima, a community in the municipality of Villagrán, was the home base of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, a fuel theft and extortion gang, and a fortress for its leader, also known as “El Marro.”

According to a report by the newspaper Milenio, Yépez turned Santa Rosa de Lima into a town that perfectly met the needs of the criminal organization he heads. His properties there and in the neighboring municipality of Celaya also afforded him a life of luxury with his family and helped him to evade authorities.

Milenio reporter Jannet López Ponce described the criminal infrastructure that was once at the gang leader’s disposal and detailed its layout, explaining how it helped El Marro flee when authorities launched an operation to arrest him early last year.

A pink chapel on Leandro Valle, a street on the outskirts of Santa Rosa de Lima, marks the entrance to the town that was formerly Yépez’s undisputed domain.

Hidden behind trees on an unpaved nearby side street is a green house with a front yard that was used by the criminal gang for the manufacture and storage of homemade explosives.

That building may well have provided a space for the making of explosive devices left in a vehicle outside the Pemex refinery in Salamanca in January last year on the same day that a banner signed by El Marro appeared in the city demanding that President López Obrador remove federal security forces from Guanajuato.

Just 150 meters from the makeshift explosives factory is a yellow three-story structure that was once used as a cartel safe house, Milenio said, adding that a small business now occupies the ground floor. One-hundred meters further along Leandro Valle is the so-called “pink house,” where Santa Rosa de Lima gangsters dismembered the bodies of their victims and dissolved them in barrels of acid, according to authorities.

Two-hundred meters away in the center of the small community is a monument with two arches that El Marro reportedly had built in his own honor. Located in front of the town church, the structure alludes to the letter M, a reference to Yépez’s nickname.

A few meters away is a home that is now used by state police officers – who have wrested back control of Santa Rosa de Lima – to go to the bathroom, Milenio said. Yépez formerly loaned the house to residents for parties, occasionally also providing food, wine and musical groups.

According to Guanajuato security commissioner Sophia Huett, the purpose of making the home available for social functions was to maintain the social fabric of the town. In other words, it was a means for “El Marro” to ensure that he maintained the support and loyalty of residents, who set up road blockades and confronted security forces early last year to stymie the operation to locate and arrest him.

This 'prison' housed El Marro's rivals. — This ‘prison’ housed El Marro’s rivals.

At the end of a nearby dirt road, the fugitive criminal leader – Mexico’s most notorious huachicolero, or fuel thief – created his own prison to house rivals from whom he believed he could extract information that would benefit the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, Milenio said.

When security forces seized control of the facility in the middle of last year, they freed six people — among them a police officer from the neighboring municipality of Celaya.

The makeshift jail had some of the features of a real one, such as cells with barred doors secured with padlocks. Mounds of dirt now surround the improvised lockup because authorities excavated the property to search for bodies, Milenio said. Those held there were reportedly told that they would be killed and buried on the grounds if they didn’t cooperate with their interrogators.

On the opposite corner is a house to which “El Marro” is believed to have retreated after he was personally involved in the interrogation and torture of people held in his prison. The home, which has a garden, swimming pool, bar and games area, is the largest seized by authorities in Santa Rosa de Lima.

Yépez was able to move between his network of properties in the space of just a few minutes, Milenio said, adding that their proximity to each other helped him to avoid capture.

A few kilometers from Santa Rosa de Lima is another enclave that was once controlled by Yépez and his criminal colleagues. On the outskirts of San José de Guanajuato, a town in the municipality of Celaya, is a warehouse that El Marro used as the front for a shell company his family created called Logística López.

The Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel stored stolen vehicles and goods in the warehouse as well as drugs and weapons. The property had a security camera system and a living room, bedroom and bathroom with a hot tub, Milenio said.

The warehouse has a door that leads directly onto one of Yépez’s most prestigious properties. Known as Casa Albercas, it boasts a large pool with a swim-in bar set in a garden decorated with stone statues of lions.

The home has an entrance onto a deserted street that allowed El Marro to access the Salamanca-Celaya highway and the Celaya airport in a matter of minutes.

A short distance away is the Alamo Country Club where Yépez had another luxury home in an exclusive residential estate. Painted in orange, the spacious house was the main residence for the criminal leader and his family, Milenio said.

While authorities have secured many properties linked to El Marro and his criminal organization, seized more than 100 vehicles, blocked access to bank accounts holding 35.4 million pesos and arrested scores of people connected to the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, including El Marro’s wife (later released), they have not managed to achieve the central aim of the operation they launched early last year: take Yépez into custody.

Still, Guanajuato Attorney General Carlos Zamarripa told Milenio that the operation to capture El Marro and break up the cartel is continuing with the same intensity with which it began last year. Asked when Yépez might be captured, he responded: “It’s something that is under investigation.”

Federal authorities have claimed success in reducing fuel theft in Guanajuato but have failed to stem bloodshed in the state, which was the most violent in Mexico last year with more than 3,500 homicides. A bloody turf war between the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is believed to be the main cause of the high levels of violence.

There is also evidence that Yépez’s criminal organization has expanded into Querétaro and Hidalgo, while increasing its focus on collecting extortion payments in Guanajuato, including the expat and tourism mecca of San Miguel de Allende.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Zihuatanejo’s Paella Festival pleases palates, raises funds

Elisabeth Ashe

February 15, 2020

When the Rotary Club of Zihuatanejo was considering a theme for its annual fundraiser, it wanted to do something different.

It hit on the idea of staging a paella festival, mainly because it would be unlike all the other gastronomical events in the area. Besides, it would be a great way to introduce the traditional Spanish favorite to the Pacific coast resort.

Held February 1 on the municipal beach in front of the archaeology museum and set against the backdrop of a cruise ship that happened to be docked there that evening, the second annual edition of the Paella Festival was a magical and tasty experience for the 360 people that attended.

The committee invited various restaurants and four major hotels to whip up their best version of the saffron-infused rice dish from Valencia. Aside from the traditional paella of seafood and/or chicken, there were vegetarian options as well.

The beneficiary of this year’s event was the Neonatal Intensive Therapy Unit and the toco-surgery area of the General Hospital of Zihuatanejo. The hospital’s wish list ran up a hefty price tag of 600,000 pesos and included a special crib for premature babies.

“Everything related to the paella festival was donated,” says organizer Claudia De Leon Mederos, from the cutlery, plates and flowers to the wines and, of course, the 23 different paellas provided by 11 businesses.

For last year’s event, the municipality contributed 40,000 pesos to the cause for a grand total of 200,000 pesos. A silent auction was added and various business contributed with gift certificates and products — another example of how important the cause is to the city.

Mederos says she has every reason to believe that the proceeds from this year’s fundraiser will exceed last year’s, given the generous contributions from the community, and that over time everything on the hospital’s list will be purchased.

Mexico News Daily

CORRECTION: The previous version of this story contained incorrect information regarding the beneficiary of the festival.

Roberto the Clown: entertaining drivers for 22 years

Alex Harrison-Cripps

February 15, 2020

For the past 22 years, Roberto Barnan has dressed as a clown and juggled for Mexico City’s frustrated drivers as he bounces between the red lights at the crossroads of Avenida Baja California and Calle Medillín.

The city is known for its terrible traffic and pollution, but Roberto has capitalized on this and brings a few seconds of entertainment to the local commuters. Depending on the day, he makes between 200 and 300 pesos, but he appears to thrive more on the warm reception he receives from his audience.

The early commuters are always the most pleased to see him, he explains, but it’s also fantastic to see a child’s face light up as they pass him in the street. As we chat between red lights, Roberto returns numerous greetings from various people going about their daily lives.

Roberto is a married father of five and grandfather of many but he is the only juggler in his family. What does his wife think of his job, I asked. “She likes my job,” he says and then chuckles as he adds, ‘probably because it brings in money.”

We talk briefly about the city and how beautiful it is before the conversation turns to politics.

“It’s always best not to talk politics in this town’, he says, but given a magic wand, Roberto would make everyone more honest. “It would help with so many problems.”

Roberto’s message to anyone considering visiting Mexico is not to believe everything on the television.

For the most part the country is calm, with beautiful places and cultural traditions that cannot be found anywhere else in the world — not to mention the juggling clown in Roma Sur.

Mexico News Daily

In Zacatecas, murals reflect hope for a future without violence

MND Staff

February 15, 2020

A collaboration between Zacatecas residents and visual artists has brought color and hope to the streets of three violent and marginalized neighborhoods in the northern state.

Residents of Gavilanes, a neighborhood in the municipality of Guadalupe; Popular CTM in Zacatecas city; and Abel Dávila in Fresnillo worked with street artists to dream up and paint 43 murals on the exterior walls of houses and apartment buildings.

The murals express the residents’ feelings, wishes and desires and feature their pets and family members, the newspaper El Universal reported,

The overriding theme, El Universal said, is that the future can be better – the future can be what the residents painted.

Called Comunidad en Paz (Community at Peace), the mural project was supported by the Zacatecas government, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Tomate artists’ collective and the paint company Comex.

In addition to representing hope for a better future, the murals also draw attention to problems that the neighborhoods suffer, such as drug consumption, violence, low levels of school attendance and teenage pregnancies, said Zacatecas Crime Prevention Undersecretary Armando García Neri.

One of the participants in the project was 59-year-old housewife Cipriana González. She collaborated with the artists David Hernández – or Dagos as he is known in the street art world – and Tomás Major to develop an idea for a mural that now adorns her home in Gavilanes.

The mural features González and her half-sister Cristina as young women as well as the former’s mother holding her favorite flower, an alcatraz, 0r calla lily. The painting of González’s mother was based on the only photo that González has of her.

Above the three women are two young boys, who were added on the suggestion of a neighbor who yearns for the days of her childhood. González has her hand on her heart in the mural, a reference to the two heart attacks she has suffered, and survived.

Females are the stronger sex but lack respect and opportunities, she told El Universal. Featuring women as protagonists in the new murals help to generate greater respect for them, González said.

She said that the mural project and the art it produced have helped to bring the local community closer together.

Since the mural was painted, people who she didn’t previously know have stopped her in the street to say hello, González said, adding: “It’s nice to see people are interested … I like making friends from this.”

Just a few kilometers from Gavilanes is Popular CTM, a Zacatecas city neighborhood where 26 murals were painted as part of the Comunidad en Paz project. One of the most eye-catching is a 15 by 12-meter mural featuring a young boy wearing a bonnet with elephant ears.

Also painted by Dagos, the mural is of the oldest son – now a grown man – of Lourdes Mendoza Pizarro, or Doña Lulú as she is known in the neighborhood. She told El Universal that she has seen people stopping in their cars to take photos of the mural since it was painted on her home late last year.

Local children, including Doña Lulú’s granddaughter, helped Hernández complete the work. Mendoza said that she hasn’t noticed a reduction in crime in Popular CTM but added that young people are not scrawling graffiti on the murals as they do on unadorned walls.

Violeta Zarco, a project coordinator at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said that it is too soon to say whether crime has dropped in the neighborhoods where the murals were painted. However, a change can already be seen in the people who live in them, she said, explaining that their confidence has grown.

Zacatecas Governor Alejandro Tello said that more work needs to be done to reduce crime but acknowledged the efforts of the people involved in the mural project. He said that his administration has invested 700 million pesos (US $37.8 million) in crime prevention strategies implemented by 22 different government agencies.

Dagos, the artist, conceded that murals can’t solve problems such as drug use and trash in the streets but said that the “visual gifs” could “empower” children and help steer them down a positive path in life.

The murals help them to know that they matter and feel that they are important to the barrio, or neighborhood, in which they live, he said.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Warden, prisons chief dismissed after inmate raped

MND Staff

February 15, 2020

The prison where an inmate was allegedly raped.

The warden of a jail in Zacatecas and the state’s prisons chief have been dismissed over a case in which a female inmate was allegedly raped by a guard.

Zacatecas Public Security Secretary Ismael Camberos said in an interview Friday that the warden of the Calera prison and the general director of the state prison system, Adán Jiménez Solano, have both been removed from their roles.

Camberos told Radio Fórmula that Governor Alejandro Tello ordered the dismissals, which come a year and a half after the sexual abuse allegedly occurred.

A woman identified as Brenda N. was arrested in August 2018 on aggravated kidnapping charges and transferred to the District Men’s Prison in Calera, a municipality 25 kilometers north of Zacatecas city.

She was held for two months in the prison, where she alleges the chief guard raped her and subjected her to physical and verbal abuse. She reported the abuse when she was transferred to a state women’s prison in Cieneguillas.

The head of the Zacatecas Human Rights Commission (CDHEZ) told the newspaper Milenio on Thursday that the alleged aggressor is “fully identified” and that the commission has asked the state Attorney General’s Office to lay charges and arrest him.

“He was the chief [guard]; after the events occurred, the man left the prison system,” María de la Luz Domínguez Campos said.

“There were female personnel [in the prison] but … not many; it was at the time when there were no female guards there that [the chief guard] took the opportunity to attack the victim,” she said.

Domínguez said that the victim – who remains in prison – has received psychological support since she first reported the abuse and that she has proved her innocence of one charge against her and is in the process of attempting to clear her name of a second charge.

She said that the CDHEZ issued a recommendation in December 2019 that stated that other guards at the Calera prison became aware of the abuses committed by the aggressor but did nothing to stop it.

“The fellow guards, observing … the circumstances, didn’t report them to their superiors,” Domínguez said.

The commission urged the state government to take action against prison authorities and asserted that Brenda N. should have never been held at a men’s prison.

Women cannot be incarcerated at a district prison because they are exclusively for men and don’t have the infrastructure or sufficient female personnel to attend to them, Domínguez said.

Despite its name, Security Secretary Camberos claimed that the District Men’s Prison in Calera is not exclusively for men.

Women can also be held there while they attend pre-trial hearings, he said, adding that if they are ordered to stand trial, they are then transferred to state-run women’s prisons. Camberos stressed that men and women are always separated when detained in mixed correctional facilities.

He also said that a warrant has now been issued for the arrest of the accused rapist but “he remains a fugitive.”

Zacatecas government General Secretary Jehú Eduí Salas also rejected the claim that the Calera prison is exclusively for men, adding that Brenda N. “was completely isolated on a [separate] floor of the penitentiary, under … personal protection, with guards.”

The Zacatecas prison system has had a difficult start to 2020. Seventeen inmates were killed during two riots at the Cieneguillas prison in the first week of the year after which the jail’s warden was dismissed.

Source: Milenio (sp), Noticieros Televisa (sp)

Once again, Mexico City gang boss released—and rearrested

MND Staff

February 15, 2020

El Lunares: released and arrested yet again.

The suspected leader of the Unión de Tepito drug and crime gang has been released from prison and rearrested for a second time within the space of a week.

Óscar Andrés Flores, also known as “El Lunares,” left the Reclusorio Norte prison in Mexico City early Saturday morning after a judge ruled on Friday that he wasn’t required to stand trial on charges of express kidnapping.

The judge determined that there were irregularities in the case against Flores, including the fact that the apparent victim of the alleged kidnapping filed the complaint against him using the identity of another person.

Upon leaving prison, “El Lunares” was immediately arrested by Mexico City police on homicide charges and transferred to a prosecutor’s office, the newspaper Milenio reported.

It is the third time that authorities are attempting to put Flores on trial since the suspected criminal leader was first arrested in Tolcayuca, Hidalgo, on January 31.

According to official police reports, Flores and two other suspected members of the Unión de Tepito were arrested in the act of committing a crime. The reports said that the three individuals were found to be in possession of drugs, military-grade weapons and ammunition after being stopped for speeding.

However, at a hearing on February 8, Judge Beatriz Moguel Ancheyta said that federal prosecutors were unable to provide sufficient evidence to back up the official version of the capture.

She ordered the immediate release of all three men, allowing Flores to leave preventative custody at the Altiplano maximum security prison in México state last Saturday.

Mexico City police promptly arrested “El Lunares” on express kidnapping charges and transferred him to Reclusorio Norte where he was held until today.

Both Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and the capital’s Attorney General’s Office (FGJ) slammed the judge’s decision on Friday to release Flores, who allegedly took over the leadership of the Unión de Tepito after the arrests of the former bosses known as “El Betito” and “El Pistaches.”

“It’s inconceivable, outrageous, that a judge has released a criminal [based on] minor arguments. Security and justice are only possible with the commitment of the three powers [of government] . . . The Mexico City judicial power needs to review this case and others,” Sheinbaum wrote on Twitter.

In a strongly-worded statement, the FGJ expressed its “complete disagreement” with the decision to release Flores.

“The times of presenting false evidence were left in the past,” the FGJ said, adding that “under no circumstance” would it allow a complaint to be filed under a fake name.

Flores’ defense team, the statement continued, presented a person at Friday’s hearing who claimed to be the victim of the express kidnapping, identifying himself with a document that the judge “accepted as authentic without giving the Attorney General’s Office the opportunity to verify its validity.”

The person who filed the claim against Flores for express kidnapping – the real victim – “was and is under the protection of this Attorney General’s Office,” the FGJ said.

The Attorney General’s Office said that it will appeal the decision to absolve “El Lunares” of the express kidnapping charges and file a complaint against the judge with the Mexico City Judiciary Council.

It said that the suspected criminal leader is linked to a range of crimes including drug trafficking, bribery, kidnapping, assaults and murder.

Flores is believed to have moved to Hidalgo after Mexico City police raided four properties linked to the Unión de Tepito in the neighborhood of Morelos last October. Police arrested more than 30 suspects but “El Lunares” evaded capture, allegedly by escaping via a secret tunnel.

The gang he is suspected to lead is believed to be one of the largest distributors of drugs in Mexico City and is also suspected of extortion and other crimes.

Gunmen from the Unión de Tepito – based in the notoriously dangerous neighborhood of the same name – allegedly dressed as mariachis to carry out an attack on members its arch rival, the Anti Unión, at Garibaldi Square in Mexico City in September 2018. Six people were killed in the attack and another seven were wounded.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp)

Bimbo, world’s largest bread maker, expands into Kazakhstan

MND Staff

February 14, 2020

Bimbo will supply McDonald's outlets in the Central Asian country. — Bimbo will have a presence in 33 countries.

Diners at McDonald’s restaurants in Nur-Sultan and Almaty will soon be biting into burgers served on buns originally conceived in Mexico: the Mexico City-based baked-goods multinational Grupo Bimbo is extending its reach into Kazakhstan.

Via its United States-based subsidiary Bimbo QSR, the world’s largest bread maker announced that it has signed a deal with the company Food Town, which is the exclusive supplier of buns to McDonald’s in the central Asian nation.

Grupo Bimbo said that it will have a 51% stake in the deal with Food Town and that Bimbo QSR will have the opportunity to “strengthen its manufacturing footprint” and relationship with quick-service restaurant (QSR) clients in central Asia.

“It is our priority to meet the needs of our QSR customers worldwide and we will continue to invest in our business to achieve it,” said Bimbo QSR president Mark Bendix. “This operation in Kazakhstan is well positioned to meet the growing demand of our customers in the region.”

The joint venture with Food Town is expected to be up and running by the end of the first quarter of 2020, Grupo Bimbo said, adding that Kazakhstan will be the 33rd country in which it has a presence.

The company’s biggest market is the United States followed by Mexico. The two North American countries account for 50% and 30% of total sales, respectively. Bimbo also has a presence in many Latin American nations as well as countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.

The company’s investment plans for Mexico will be announced soon, CEO Daniel Servitje said this week. Economic stability, low inflation and a stable exchange rate have generated confidence to invest in the country, he said.

Founded in Mexico City in 1945, Bimbo has 196 factories both in Mexico and abroad and employs more than 136,000 people. Its products include fresh and frozen bread, buns, cookies, cakes, English muffins, bagels, tortillas and snacks.

Bimbo has one of the world’s largest distribution networks and sells its products at more than 3.1 million retail outlets.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Puerto Vallarta hotels oppose change in room tax collection

MND Staff

February 14, 2020

Puerto Vallarta hoteliers have rejected a decision by the Jalisco government to take over responsibility for collecting the lodging tax paid by overnight visitors to the Pacific coast resort city.

Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez announced on January 28 that the state government would audit and restructure the Puerto Vallarta Tourism Trust (Fidetur), a municipal body that currently collects the 3% room tax. As a result, the Jalisco government will collect the tax, Alfaro said.

Álvaro Garciarce Monraz, president of both Fidetur and the Puerto Vallarta Hotel Association, told the newspaper El Economista that hotel owners are worried about where the money will end up.

Fidetur collected 143 million pesos (US $7.7 million) from the lodging tax last year that was used to promote Vallarta as a tourism destination both within Mexico and abroad, he said, adding that an agreement is needed between the trust and the government to allow the former to continue using the revenue.

“We’re very worried that these resources will be used in a different way,” Garciarce said.

He stressed that he had no concern about the audit of Fidetur and rejected any suggestion that the state government was carrying it out because it has suspicions about the trust’s use of the funds it collects.

“We’ve had audits every year and we’ve always gone very well. We don’t have a problem with that,” Garciarce said.

The hotel association chief said an increase of 60% in arrivals at the Puerto Vallarta airport over the last five years was due to the promotion that Fidetur has been able to carry out with room tax revenue. The revenue has increased 5-8% annually in the same period, Garciarce said.

For his part, Jalisco Tourism Secretary Germán Ralis Cumplido said that the state government is planning to audit all autonomous public organizations and trusts, not just Fidetur in Puerto Vallarta.

“There is a review process that I believe is healthy; [its purpose] is to make better use of public resources,” he said.

Ralis said that the room tax revenue collected by the state government will be used not just for tourism promotion but also to invest in tourism infrastructure in Vallarta, Jalisco’s premier tourism destination.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Quetzalcóatl, The Legend, a musical that leaves Disney in the dust

Cody Copeland

February 14, 2020

A scene from Quetzalcóatl: 'Mexico has many legends.'

Who needs Disney when Mexico’s rich history is already full of vibrant and exciting stories to tell?

That’s the opinion of Aranza Zu López, director of the musical Quetzalcóatl, The Legend, a spectacle of dance, costumes and lights that she believes can compete with such Broadway giants as The Lion King.

“Mexico has no need to make anything up. We don’t need Disney stories. We have so many legends, stories and a wonderful past and present,” she said.

Her show has presented the history of Mexico — from Aztec creation myths to the arrival of the conquistadors — to fascinated audiences both at home and across the globe, telling the story in what López calls the universal language of dance.

The show has only one singer, Fabiola Jaramillo, who performs five songs in Náhuatl and Spanish. The production also includes the recital of a poem composed by Aztec poet, ruler, architect and warrior Nezahualcóyotl. Other than that, the story is told with music, lights and body language.

“It was controversial, of course, … because the concept is very different from what we know as musical theater. We’re accustomed to seeing Broadway shows with everything [told] through song and theater. Not here. Here everything is told through dance, with 50 dancers and no dialogue,” López said.

After opening in Poland, Quetzalcóatl, The Legend took the story of Mexico to other countries in Europe, as well as China, South Korea and Japan, before returning to the western hemisphere to tour Mexico and other countries in Latin America.

“The original intention was to tell both Mexico and the rest of the world that the country is not about violence, narcotrafficking [and] pollution, but history, legends, smells, colors — all the diversity and talent that we have,” she said.

She stressed the importance of relaying her show’s message to Mexicans as well as to foreigners.

“It is a Mexican show, with Mexican talent, so we aren’t neglecting domestic stages. … We have been to many cities, some with problems of violence, like Tampico [Tamaulipas]. They told us not to go there but we did because the message we bring is profound and touches lives,” she said.

López is now preparing to take the show to Las Vegas, Nevada, and is also putting together a new presentation focusing on one of the most famous women in Mexican history, Frida Kahlo.

Sources: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)

Audits uncover 544bn pesos misspent by Peña Nieto administration

MND Staff

February 14, 2020

The federal government has detected irregularities of more than 544 billion pesos in the spending of the administration led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.

The alleged misuse of the funds – US $29.3 billion at today’s exchange rate – was uncovered by the Secretariat of Public Administration (SFP) via 2,500 audits of spending by the Peña Nieto government, which was in office between 2012 and 2018.

Presenting the audit report on Thursday, Public Administration Secretary Irma Sandoval said that the amount of resources in question is greater than the entire federal budget allocated annually for education and health, which receive more funds than any other areas.

In the report, “we reveal how resources that should have been used for the well-being of the people were squandered,” she said, adding that the SFP has initiated administrative proceedings where appropriate.

The audits looked at spending across a range of areas including health, education, infrastructure and tourism.

Sandoval said that irregularities to the tune of about 19 billion pesos were detected in spending on the construction of the previous government’s airport project at Texcoco, México state.

President López Obrador, who long asserted that the US $13-billion project was corrupt, canceled construction of the airport after a public consultation held a month before he took office in December 2018.

The questionable expenditure includes 6 billion pesos in advance payments that the government is currently trying to recover and an additional 6 billion pesos that were used to pay for work that remains unaccounted for, Sandoval said.

Among the most emblematic cases of corruption, the secretary said, was a change to the plan for the Puerto Vallarta-Manzanillo highway that released coastal land to a tourism developer; a 1.44-billion-peso overrun on two highway projects in Puebla and Veracruz; and the “improper transfer” by the Institute of Administration and Appraisal of National Assets of 2.44 hectares of land at a federally owned scientific facility to two companies and two individuals.

The property transfer cost the public coffers some 940 million pesos, Sandoval said.

“There is another very well-known case related to the former general director of Pemex Fertilizers, Édgar Torres Garrido, in which irregularities were identified in the buying and selling” of a fertilizer plant owned by Grupo Fertinal, she said.

Sandoval: 2,500 audits have been conducted.

The state oil company’s purchase of that plant, located in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, and a fertilizer plant in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, are under investigation by the federal government, which claims that they were bought at highly inflated prices.

Former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya was arrested in Spain this week on charges related to his role in the US $475-million purchase of the latter, a transaction from which he allegedly received close to $4 million himself.

For embezzling public money, Torres Garrido was disqualified from holding public office for 15 years and fined 3.8 billion pesos, Sandoval noted.

The SFP said in a statement that it has opened more than 400 “proceedings of administrative responsibility or reports of irregularities” in relation to the questionable spending it detected during Peña Nieto’s government.

“With regard to penalties of bidders, suppliers and contractors … 81 files were resolved in 2019,” the secretariat said, adding that fines totaling almost 23 billion pesos were imposed in 63 of the cases.

The government has made the elimination of corruption a priority since it took office in late 2018. López Obrador frequently rails against his predecessors and has floated the idea of holding a public consultation to ask the Mexican people if Mexico’s five most recent past presidents should be put on trial for their alleged corruption and other wrongdoings.

The government’s highest profile corruption-related arrest to date is that of Rosario Robles, a cabinet secretary in the Peña Nieto administration who is currently in prison awaiting trial on charges linked to the so-called “Master Fraud” embezzlement scheme. Eleven federal agencies are suspected of diverting billions of pesos of public money through shell and illegal companies between 2013 and 2014.

Peña Nieto, who has virtually disappeared from the public spotlight since leaving office, was advised about the scheme but did nothing to stop it, former chief auditor Juan Manuel Portal said in August 2019.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

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