Emilio Lozoya: Odebrecht’s fight against corruption crashes in Mexico under the shadow of impunity | International

Emilio Lozoya, former director of the Mexican state oil company Pemex between 2012 and 2016, was arrested exactly one year ago in a luxury project near Malaga, Spain. Since then, the file with one of the men closest to former president Enrique Peña Nieto has grown. The case, a branch of Brazilian construction company Odebrecht’s millionaire bribe network, has been developing for months between lack of transparency and the controversy caused by the benefits the politician gets in return for working with the law. With these premises, it is feared that the corruption scandal, affecting the political balance in Mexico, will go unpunished.

The investigation entered a new phase on July 28, when Spain extradited Lozoya. The former principal arrived in his country and entered a private clinic for anemia and esophageal problems, from where he took part in the first hearing via video conference. The Mexican Institute for Transparency and Access to Information on Wednesday ordered the prosecution to release the medical report that prevented Lozoya from entering prison in the case that follows him for bribery and money laundering. The authorities also link it to other irregular payments from steelmaker Altos Hornos de México and from companies associated with the Spanish construction company OHL, as EL PAÍS recently revealed. That day, Lozoya asked for a grade known as the criterion of the occasion, which in practice turned him into some sort of protected witness. Since then he has not stepped into court.

In return for benefits and to continue the trial in freedom, Lozoya told the prosecution that the corruption plot in which he allegedly participated reached the top of Peña Nieto’s government dome. He accused the former president and one of his most loyal men, his Treasury Secretary, Luis Videgaray, who reportedly received and allocated approximately $ 500 million to the 2012 PRI election campaign and the purchase of votes from opposition congressmen to approve the controversial energy reform, which opened the sector to private companies after decades of nationalist politics. Former presidents Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) were also involved in the plot. Public information on the case was managed with a dropper, with leaks and disguised statements from the Attorney General, Alejandro Gertz, who assured a meeting with PAN senators ten days ago that the trial is underway and that the former director van Pemex will be tried.

However, as of the beginning of December, there has been no information indicating that the case is progressing. In late January, the prosecution postponed the hearing of former conservative PAN senator Jorge Luis Lavalle, accused of bribing Emilio Lozoya for part of the party bank that supported the energy opening, including former senators Ernesto Cordero, Francisco Cabeza de Vaca and Francisco Domínguez. Lavalle dismisses the charges despite one of his associates admitting to appearing in videos receiving bundles of cash. “I will exercise my right to defend against the lies of well-known criminal Emilio Lozoya,” Lavalle wrote on January 26.

A case in total darkness

Opacity is one of the main concerns around the case. Lawyer platform Tojil and Transparencia Mexicana sent a letter to Supreme Court President Arturo Zaldívar on July 9, days after Spain extradited Lozoya to Mexico. The organizations demanded opening of a case that has become the flag of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s anti-corruption crusade. However, as a result of the pandemic, the Council of the Judiciary imposed additional restrictions on the first sessions. “The principle of constitutional publicity of criminal hearings must not be affected by these measures [sanitarias]This is especially important in a case that could be related to a transnational corruption network connected to the Odebrecht company. The transparency of this procedure is in the public interest at the national and international level, ”said the association’s letter.

It made little sense. The judiciary reported the only hearings against Lozoya in Mexico by a WhatsApp group. Requests to the judge and amparos were also denied, says Tojil’s lawyer Adriana Greaves, who questions Lozoya’s opportunity to cooperate with the law and rejects the defense strategy, which presents him as ‘just a cog’ of the corrupt story. The lawyer considers it crucial to frame the process within the Odebrecht case as a whole, which in exchange for concessions and contracts has infiltrated and bribed dozens of administrations across America – or at least attempted to do so. Since the scale of the scandal became known between late 2016 and early 2017, the investigations have led to real political earthquakes in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia. Mexico is at risk of becoming an exception.

“The Lozoya case, once brought to Mexico, was already showing strange signs. Those suspicions and that initial strangeness have been confirmed, ”confirms constitutional lawyer Luis Pérez de Acha. “The reasons Lozoya was meant to receive the benefits of the probability criterion were unclear, and that strangeness stemmed from the kind of crimes he was accused of,” says this expert, who also sees the ex’s allegations. . director of Pemex a story full of rumors that are already known. It was more of a hypothesis-based fictional story. He selectively pointed more to the way of gossiping, gossiping, with unsupported information, ”he appreciates. “One year was more than enough time for Lozoya to provide evidence to support larger and more relevant information.”

Prosecutors in the investigation have suggested that they are willing to suspend the two proceedings against Lozoya by March 7 if he provides sufficient and robust evidence to support his allegations. The acid test will be the formal appearance of former Senator Lavalle, who still has no date, despite his willingness to defend himself against what he sees as “ politically motivated lies. ” If Lavalle’s case doesn’t go through, it will be tough on Lozoya’s accusations, who are a free man at the moment.

To these considerations is added media coverage of the mid-election trial, where the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has referred to the case from time to time since his morning conferences to impeach the political class that preceded him and whose parties have resorted to a major opposition alliance heading for elections in July. At the beginning of the year, he admitted that this case has been going on for a long time and asked to be informed about the evolution of the investigations. Meanwhile, despite being very different cases, a different spirit hovers over the process and this is what happened to former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos. Charged with drug trafficking, extradited from the United States and eventually acquitted by the prosecution.

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