Ex-governor of Tamaulipas will go to trial for unlawful enrichment

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October 4, 2018

Bancomext was target of North Korean hackers.

An elite group of North Korean hackers has been identified as responsible for cyberattacks on banks around the world — including Mexico’s state-owned development bank Bancomext — that netted hundreds of millions of dollars, security researchers said yesterday.

A report by United States cybersecurity company FireEye said the mission of the newly-identified group, dubbed APT38, is to raise funds for the North Korean regime headed by Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.

“They are a cyber-criminal group with the skills of a cyber espionage campaign,” said Sandra Joyce, FireEye’s vice-president of intelligence. “They take their time to learn the intricacies of the organization.”

The attack on Bancomext occurred in early January and attempted to steal around US $110 million but was shut down before the funds were removed.

“Fortunately, the protocol and quick reaction of the area responsible for operation, with the help of banks, corresponding authorities and the Bank of México, contained this incident,” Bancomext said in a statement.

In May, the Bank of México revealed that five financial institutions had been targeted by cyberattacks that resulted in the loss of 300 million pesos (US $ 15.7 million at today’s exchange rate) although it is unclear whether the North Korean group was the source of the attacks.

The FireEye report said that APT38 is one of several hacking cells within a larger umbrella group known as “Lazarus” but that it has unique skills and tools that have allowed it to carry out some of the world’s largest cyber heists.

Joyce said that APT38 takes several months or longer to learn the workings of its targets before it launches an attack.

Once it succeeds in extracting funds, “they deploy destructive malware on their way out” to hide its traces, she added.

Joyce explained that FireEye decided to go public with its investigation because the group appears to be still operating and is “undeterred by any diplomatic efforts.”

APT38 appears to have “the scope and resources of a nation state,” she added.

Nalani Fraser, a member of the FireEye research team, said that APT38 attacks have attempted to steal at least US $1.1 billion since 2014 and have succeeded in siphoning off “hundreds of millions of dollars based on data that we can confirm.”

Source: AFP (sp)

1 kidnapper dead, 2 victims freed in Chapala confrontation

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October 4, 2018

Taking down a gang of kidnappers brought a heavy police presence to Chapala yesterday.

A kidnapping in Chapala, Jalisco, concluded yesterday with one kidnapper dead, five arrested and the safe release of their two victims.

More than 100 state and federal officials participated in the successful rescue operation, which took place in a hotel where the victims’ relatives were about to deliver a ransom payment.

“An operation was set up in the establishment . . . with the goal of apprehending the members of this gang,” said acting state Attorney General Marisela Gómez Cobos. “When the alleged criminals realized their cover was blown, they opened fire on state agents, who repelled the aggression.”

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An agent of the prosecutor’s office was injured in the gunfight, but the gangsters fled the scene and took cover on a hill on the Chapala-Ajijic highway. State anti-kidnapping agents gave chase and a second gunfight followed in which one of the kidnappers was killed and five were arrested, including the suspected leader of the gang and three women.

Following the arrests, officials determined that the kidnappers’ victims were being held in a house in a house in nearby Jocotepec. “Both were rescued alive and in good health,” said Gómez.

Sources consulted by the newspaper Milenio said the gang operated in the Chapala-Ajijic-Jocotepec corridor, mostly targeting local berry farmers. It has been linked to at least eight kidnappings in Ajijic and Jocotepec.

Source: Milenio (sp)

In the new era of austerity, iPads for all in Mexico City Congress

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October 3, 2018

Mexico may be in the early stages of a new age of government austerity but that hasn’t stopped every lawmaker in the Mexico City Congress from getting their very own iPad.

The tablet computers were installed at every desk in the Mexico City Legislative Assembly yesterday and will be used for a range of congressional duties including voting.

The Apple iPad that each of the 66 deputies will have at his or her disposal costs about 7,000 pesos (US $367) or more, meaning they have a combined value of at least 462,000 pesos (US $24,200).

But according to the newspaper El Universal, it is not publicly known when or where the tablets were purchased.

The newly-elected lawmakers also received gold-plated tie pins, leather document folders and card holders last month with a combined value of almost 227,000 pesos (US $11,900), El Universal said.

Mexico City’s new mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, will take office later this year after winning almost 50% of the vote in the July 1 elections.

She, like president-elect López Obrador, represented the leftist Morena party, which campaigned on a platform of ending corruption and impunity and implementing wide-reaching austerity measures.

Both houses of federal Congress, in which the coalition led by Morena now has majorities, have already moved to implement a range of cost-cutting measures.

Morena Senator Martí Batres also launched a so-called Tupper Challenge last month to encourage lawmakers to bring their own lunch to work in order to cut down on Senate expenses.

Once in the nation’s top job, López Obrador has said he will earn 60% less than current President Peña Nieto and has also pledged to sell the presidential plane, largely forgo personal security and convert the presidential residence into an arts and culture center.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Movement to rid monuments and tributes to a former president is growing

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October 3, 2018

There has been a call for this statue of Díaz Ordaz, situated in Nuevo León, to be demolished.

The movement to remove the name and image of former president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz from the public view is gaining traction.

The Mexico City government was the first to act by removing plaques bearing Díaz Ordaz’s name from the subway system this week, the 50th anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre.

At least 300 people died after Diaz Ordaz ordered the use of force against protesters in Mexico City on October 2, 1968.

Now, more proposals have sprung up in at least 10 other states.

Citizens in Nuevo León, picks and hammers in hand, volunteered to demolish a soaring eight-meter-high statue of the former president that has stood in the municipality of Linares since 1969.

Their proposal was formally delivered to the mayor with two picks attached.

In Hidalgo, a state congressman presented a proposal to declare former presidents Díaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverría Álvarez (who was interior secretary in 1968), along with former governor Alfonso Corona del Rosal, as persona non grata and remove their names from public spaces.

In Jalisco, university students requested that the municipal governments of Guadalajara and Tlaquepaque remove the name of Díaz Ordaz’s defense secretary, Marcelino García Barragán, from a boulevard.

Similar petitions to remove the ex-president’s name from thoroughfares have been filed in Baja California, Chihuahua, Guanajuato and Coahuila. In Puebla, there is a petition for the removal of a statue in Ciudad Serdán, while in San Luis Potosí people want plaques removed at the state university.

In Tamaulipas the anti-Díaz Ordaz groundswell could mean renaming an entire municipality, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, located in the northern reaches of the state.

If the movement continues to spread as many as 200 public schools across Mexico, from kindergartens to preparatory schools, could be getting new names.

Source: El Universal (sp), Animal Político (sp)

Big-box retailer Soriana will offer free wifi in all its stores

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October 3, 2018

Grocery and department store retailer Soriana will offer free wifi to customers in its more than 800 stores across the country, a process that will be completed by the end of the year.

The wireless connectivity is provided by the Texas-based connectivity solutions firm WaveMax, which specializes in providing shared wifi networks.

Through the firm’s patented SharedFi technology, shoppers at any Soriana store in Mexico will be able to go online after downloading an app.

The system will give the Monterrey-based retailer a new opportunity to offer its products: the free internet access is provided in exchange for receiving targeted and personalized ads.

The app will also allow Soriana to gather data related to its customers’ shopping habits, enabling it to have more significant and intelligent interactions with customers.

Retailers in Mexico are steadily doing more to increase their online presence and capitalize on the growing e-commerce market. Early this year, Walmart México announced it would install free wifi in its Supercenter, Superama, Sam’s Club, Bodega Aurrera and Mi Bodega Aurrera stores.

Source: El Economista (sp), Merca 2.0 (sp)

‘They haven’t done anything,’ AMLO says of transparency agency

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October 3, 2018

Councilors of the transparency agency, Inai.

President-elect López Obrador once more criticized the federal transparency agency Inai, asserting that it has “done nothing” yet its council members earn high salaries.

In an interview with the newspaper El Financiero, López called Inai — the institute for transparency, access to information and protection of personal data — a “golden bureaucracy” that has failed to yield the expected results.

“There are examples [of high bureaucracy], like the transparency institute. Council members earn like 250,000 pesos every month and what have they done? Nothing,” he said.

According to data made available by the Secretariat of Finance, each of the seven Inai council members earns 3.4 million pesos (over US $182,000) per year, or 286,000 pesos (about $15,200) a month.

“Have they stopped corruption?” he continued. “No, on the contrary, when [Inai] was founded they decided that they would keep under wraps the returns of big taxpayers. Not long ago, that same institute resolved to keep the Odebrecht [corruption] case secret,” López Obrador charged.

Yesterday was not the first time he criticized the agency. In November, he wrote on social media that “the transparency institute, a fancy bureaucracy that costs the public coffers a billion pesos per year, considered [ex-president] Vicente Fox’s multi-million-peso tax refund and the Odebrecht case secret and keeps under wraps the swindle that was the purchase of the Agro Nitrogenados plant.”

(The latter was Pemex’s 2014 purchase of a fertilizer plant for a price since considered too high and, by last year, with nothing to show for it, according to the Federal Auditor’s Office.)

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Residents block Mexico City-Puebla to protest operation against fuel thieves

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October 3, 2018

Residents of a town in Puebla blocked the Mexico City-Puebla highway for more than six hours yesterday to protest a federal operation against pipeline fuel theft.

At around 4:00am, navy personnel arrived in Palmarito Tochapan, a community in the municipality of Quecholac, to carry out raids of two properties, one presumably owned by mayor-elect Alejandro Martínez Fuentes.

Martínez took to social media to complain about the operation and to claim that the marines had arrived to “attack the people of Palmarito.”

The town was the scene of two bloody confrontations in May 2017 that left four soldiers and six presumed huachicoleros, or fuel thieves, dead.

An investigation by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) made public this month found that soldiers and state police arbitrarily executed two people and planted weapons on two bodies during the clashes.

The Quecholac mayor-elect used a live video message on Facebook to urge the local population to respond to the navy operation.

A woman approaches Martínez in the video, claiming she was shot by soldiers and displaying a small wound on her leg.

In an earlier Facebook video, the mayor-elect shows security camera footage in which a loud gunshot is heard.

“Authorities are shooting at people going by, the people shooting are soldiers . . . They’re very aggressive . . .” Martínez said.

Other residents reported that security personnel had used gas bombs in the town and broken windows of several homes.

Residents proceeded to shut down the highway in both directions between approximately 6:00am and 12:30pm, burning tires and holding up signs denouncing navy violence during yesterday’s operation.

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State government General Secretary Diódoro Carrasco Altamirano said that a group of fuel thieves was living in Palmarito and that they were responsible for inciting and participating in the highway blockade.

Contributing to suspicion surrounding the mayor-elect is that his brother, Antonio Martínez Fuentes, also known as El Toñín, is allegedly a criminal leader in the Red Triangle zone of Puebla, a region notorious for pipeline fuel theft.

El Toñín has also been accused of involvement in kidnapping, extortion and homicides in several parts of the state.

State authorities last year seized two properties owned by Antonio Martínez Fuentes as well as 16 vehicles.

His brother, who denies that he or anyone in his family is involved in criminal activity, is scheduled to take office for the Puebla-based PSI party on October 15.

Source: El Universal (sp)

90 cops dismissed, 100 under investigation in Tamaulipas

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October 3, 2018

90 cops were dismissed but 149 new ones graduated. — 90 cops were dismissed but 149 new ones joined the force.

Ninety state police officers in Tamaulipas have been let go and 100 more are under investigation for corruption and collaborating with organized crime.

The investigation by the internal affairs office of the Public Security Secretariat is a slow process, explained police chief Augusto Cruz Morales, “because it’s not easy . . . we have to demonstrate the reasons they are being dismissed.”

For officers involved in crimes, the internal process becomes a legal one.

“Some leave right away, and they are terminated. We try to not make mistakes and we avoid harming people,” Cruz said, adding that in cases where wrongdoing cannot be proven, police are simply dismissed in accordance with labor laws.

The names of dismissed officers are then entered into the Plataforma México database, a resource that prevents them being employed in other states.

In his second annual report, Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca said that over the past two years the state police force has grown by 43% to about 3,200 officers.

But the goal of the administration is to grow the force to 7,000 members.

The governor told a graduating class of 149 students of the University of Security and Justice that the goal calls for the officers to be well prepared, well trained and supplied with the instruments necessary to carry out their work.

Ninety-eight of the graduates finished the initial police training program and 51 obtained a degree in police sciences after three years of study.

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

Lawmakers, bureaucrats, reporters locked inside Congress building

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October 3, 2018