The former director of Pemex Emilio Lozoya has started the fan from prison and the cascade of complaints for corruption against the leaders of his former formation, the PRI, now adds accusations against senior officials of the main opposition party, National Action (PAN) , of Felipe Calderón, and against the governor of Puebla, Miguel Barbosa, a prominent member of Morena, the formation created by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Lozoya, in charge of the oil company during the first years of Enrique Peña Nieto's government (2012-2018), accused Barbosa and six other officials of receiving millionaire bribes during their time as leader of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) to work in favor of the energy reform approved by Peña Nieto and that allowed the entry of private companies in the exploitation of deposits.
In a document published in the news program Imagen Noticias, Lozoya assures that the resources were delivered in cash following instructions from the strong man of Peña Nieto, Luis Videgaray. According to the indictment, Videgaray also ordered Lozoya to meet two demands from Barbosa: $ 100,000 in cash and to transfer his brother, a Pemex worker, from a storage terminal in Guerrero to the capital's headquarters. Otherwise, he would not mobilize his party, the PRD, against the energy reform, says the document released.
The accusation against Barbosa is not new, a month ago his name came up but this time Lozoya details the dates and places of the money deliveries. Specifically, there were seven carried out between December 2013 and 2014 in an office on Montes Urales street in Mexico City. In her complaint, Lozoya points out that she has proof of the deliveries, receipts and a video. At that time, the governor of Puebla was about to be president of the Senate, a position he reached months later.
Lozoya's accusing finger also points to the right, at two prominent PAN leaders, Ernesto Cordero and Ricardo Anaya, who came promptly to collect from his office in Las Lomas. Another of those accused of having received bribes is the PRI coordinator in the Senate, David Penchyna, also very close to Peña Nieto, who received six million pesos (about $ 260,000). In total, according to the leaked document, they were 80 million pesos (about 3.5 million dollars) to seven deputies among whom would also be the governor of Querétaro, Francisco Domínguez.
The process against the former director of Pemex, accused of receiving large amounts of money from the construction company Odebrecht and of paying bribes in exchange for legal reforms between deputies of all parties has become a judicial and media process against the entire Mexican political class. Lozoya's accusations are aired on social networks thanks to the leaks widely aired every morning at the press conferences of President López Obrador, interested in putting the last two presidents, Peña Nieto and Felipe Calderón, on the bench and converting the investigation in a "didactic exercise for the people", on the damage caused by corruption.
However, in Lozoya's complaint known on Monday, made in exchange for prison benefits, there are some puzzling details: it is not clear if Lozoya and Barbosa ever saw each other and, in addition, Barbosa was one of the few deputies who finally voted against of the reform. It is also striking that the payments to the PAN were made to two declared enemies within the right, such as Cordero and Anaya, who supposedly came together to receive the money and discuss energy reform issues with Lozoya despite the fact that Anaya was no longer a deputy and he fought for the leadership of the party. In the case of the PRI, the noted David Penchyna was a well-known defender of the need for legal changes at Pemex for many years before, so it is not clear whether it was a reward for his work or a bribe for other reasons. In any case, in Lozoya's complaint, Luis Videgaray, the man closest to Peña Nieto during the six years in office, always appears as the mastermind of a corruption network that involves all parties.
In López Obrador's rhetoric, the investigation against Lozoya, detained in Marbella and extradited to Mexico in July, is allowing us to get to the bottom of the corruption and show that those who went through “patriotic acts” to save the main public company from the country, it was actually a vulgar purchase of votes in exchange for bags of money. For those named, however, Lozoya is doing anything to cling to the legal figure of the whistleblower / collaborator of justice and free himself from jail accusing the environment of the ex-presidents of dictating what the presidency marks.
"I never had any conversation with Lozoya, nor did I speak on the phone or see him personally," Barbosa defended himself on Twitter. The current governor of Puebla and a prominent member of López Obrador's party also said that he will file a lawsuit against Lozoya and that his vote, also regarding secondary laws, shows that he was always against the energy reform, one of the most important approved during the period of Peña Nieto. For his part, the governor of Querétaro, Francisco Domínguez, said that Lozoya is "willing to do anything to achieve forgiveness." His words coincide with the publication of a video where his secretary, Guillermo Gutiérrez, is seen receiving wads of money in what appears to be a Senate room.
Precisely, the dissemination of that video has been the most recent political earthquake once the complaints have stopped being cold papers to put names and faces to those who received the money. In the broadcast video, an alleged Pemex official is seen delivering 12 bags with 200,000 pesos ($ 8,700) each to Rafael Caraveo, technical secretary of the Senate, and Guillermo Gutiérrez. According to the prosecution, Lozoya has provided 18 hours of recordings but the anonymous publication of these first four minutes seems like an appetizer of all the evidence that he claims to have.
The video has given rise to one of the surreal moments of a process that is just beginning. Outraged by what he considers little dissemination of "the corrupt media and the organic press," President López Obrador took advantage of his daily press conference to broadcast the video again, despite the fact that the two main televisions in the country: Televisa and TV Azteca opened their nightly newscasts the day before with the images and this Tuesday the issue occupies the front pages of all the press. At the same time, the president asked the prosecutor Alejandro Gertz Manero to disseminate the full statement of Emilio Lozoya, which would be a crime and could damage the investigation due to the violation of summary secrecy.
For the lawyer linked to the PAN, Roberto Gil, with these statements the judicial process is muddied due to the "corrupting effect" that implies that the president accepts the video evidence as good and validates.
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