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Emilio Lozoya monopolizes the spotlight in Mexico. The former director of Petróleos Mexicanos plays a key role in unveiling the corruption scandals that, presumably, would reach the top of the power dome of the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto. The Lozoya case has become the best weapon for the Andrés Manuel López Obrador Administration to delve into the recent past. This judicial pragmatism has relegated Rosario Robles to a secondary role for the moment. The Secretary of State in two portfolios of the PRI six-year term is serving a year in preventive detention. Suspicion rests on her of having orchestrated La Scam Maestra, another of the great millionaire diversion scandals that were revealed during the previous term.
Robles' defense assures this newspaper that the former official "is very thin" after her first year in the Santa Marta Acatitla women's prison. He has lost between eight and 10 kilos. He suffers from hypertension and takes antidepressants. The former head of Social Development solves word searches, paints pictures and reads a lot. "She is a great reader," says her lawyer, Epigmenio Mendieta. Thus passes the time of what the lawyer considers a political revenge of the current government against her client, who became a star of the Mexican left until she explored a bumpy path: joining the cabinet of Peña Nieto.
In September 2018, alleged acts of corruption committed in the Ministry of Social Development were reported to the Prosecutor's Office. The complaint claimed that a plot milked the public coffers through simulated contracts with public universities in various states. The money was extracted from social programs destined to combat hunger, agricultural laborers and pensions for the elderly, among others. These irregularities were detected by the Superior Audit of the Federation. The damage was for more than 1,200 million pesos, disappeared between 2014 and 2017. Robles was accused for his omissions while he headed the secretariat, between December 2012 and August 2015, when it was changed to another agency: Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (Sedatu). The Master Scam represents a total diversion of 15,000 million pesos through the offices of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) - commissioned by Lozoya - and the Banco Nacional de Obras.
The arrival of López Obrador to power in December 2018 raised hopes that these events would be investigated. It was believed then that Rosario Robles would be used by the Morena Administration as the symbol to be sacrificed in the name of the anti-corruption crusade. Then came February 12, 2020, the date on which Emilio Lozoya was detained in Spain after several months at the height of the kill. The arrest was a domino that unleashed a reaction that today is pushing Peña Nieto and his closest circle to court thanks to the fact that the former director of Pemex collaborates with justice.
This was explained this Wednesday by the attorney general, Alejandro Gertz, who spoke about the similarities of the Lozoya and Robles cases in a talk with the academic Sergio Aguayo, from El Colegio de México. The former director of Pemex, said the prosecutor, has made a formal offer and has denounced events that have generated "property damage of around 400 million pesos." In the case against Robles "there is not that and it is a damage of 15,000 million pesos." "The hierarchy of damages would deserve solidarity with the State to discover this famous Master Scam," added the lawyer.
Robles has not embraced the figure of a collaborating witness, as Lozoya did, for a simple reason. "He has no one to charge for more serious crimes," says lawyer Mendieta. CEOs, the senior officer and other subordinates of Robles in Social Development have already been charged. The lawyer affirms that there are no indications that the former secretary has stolen money and that the Financial Intelligence Unit, which has become the Administration's white-collar crime hound, has not found anything incriminating against him. In September 2019, however, she was disbarred for 10 years from public service after she was found to have lied in her wealth statement.
Today Mendieta complains about the "animosity" that her client encounters from the judges in the hearings. He thinks that the former official should have been on the street "a long time ago." A judge, whose independence has been questioned, ordered preventive detention in August 2019 because he considered that Robles could not verify his address with certainty and there was a risk of an escape. The measure was decreed despite the fact that it is considered an exception reserved for cases of organized crime, homicide, kidnapping, rape and trafficking. It is not the case. "It was a maneuver to keep her in prison," says the lawyer.
Not all specialists believe that the preventive detention was undeserved. The lawyer Adriana Greaves, from the Tojil organization, considers that the defense strategy leans towards victimization. "It was a success of the public prosecutor's office that it justified the preventive detention ... it did respond to a real risk that she would run away," considers Greaves, who knows the case well. An expert in cases of political corruption, Greaves estimates that the Prosecutor's Office is losing this legal battle. Authorities reclassified the accusations. They went from the crime of bribery (bribery), punishable by up to 25 years, and abusive exercise of functions to less serious ones such as omission and improper exercise of public service, which are punishable by a maximum of seven years. “A network of corruption is not being dismantled. It is not just an omission, here there was a crime with all the fraud, "says Greaves.
Lawyer Mendieta is certain that Rosario Robles will be released in October if the pandemic allows the delayed work to be released in court.