"It is not the corruption of the system, but the corruption as a system," concludes a dejected Marco Ruffo, the character of O Mechanism based on the Brazilian policeman Gerson Machado, as he discovers the bribery payment network of the construction company Odebrecht.
Mexican justice has not needed, like Machado, to spend nights and nights awake joining the strips of thousands of documents that the front men threw away after going through the paper shredder. It was enough for him to follow Odebrecht's trail and press the button Lozoya, former president of the public oil company Pemex and one of the men closest to former president Enrique Peña Nieto, to reach the same conclusion: “It is not the corruption of the system, but the corruption as a system "
The 63 pages of the statement that Emilio Lozoya made before the prosecutor on August 11 and that on Wednesday reached the newsrooms throughout the country with the names, dates, amounts and places of delivery of the suitcases of money destined for former presidents, ministers and deputies have shaken the political life of a country that places corruption as its main cancer in polls but that rarely has such clear evidence of its actions.
The four-minute video that accompanies the confession, in which the collaborators of two powerful deputies are seen putting dozens of bundles of bills in suitcases, or the payments delivered by Odebrecht in the Senate parking lot, portray the crude handling of a network that in the cinema it looks more sophisticated.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president who won the elections two years ago with the promise of ending corruption, celebrates the scandal every day by seeing all his political enemies targeted together in the same document. The appearance on Thursday of a video of his brother, Pío López Obrador, receiving cash for his campaign has not modified one iota his speech about the putrefaction of the governments that preceded him and that corruption ended with his arrival.
So far, Sunami Lozoya has involved 17 politicians including three former presidents, presidential candidates, ministers and deputies from the two parties, PAN and PRI, who have ruled the country for the past 90 years.
Almost all of them have been accused of receiving large amounts of money for the approval of laws that allowed the entry of private companies, such as Odebrecht. Not even Morena, the formation of the president, has escaped from the hurricane for minor favors.
The scandal has broken into a thousand pieces the corrupting bubble of Odebrecht in which Mexico lived despite the signs. In a July 2017 interview with EL PAÍS, Rodrigo Tacla, a lawyer for Odebrecht's Structured Operations Department, made it clear that Lozoya was the man chosen by the construction company. ”Odebrecht believed that the president of Mexico would be Emilio Lozoya. And he liked that idea. The construction company was very interested in Lozoya ”.
So it was. For two years, between 2012 and 2014, Lozoya Austin, a 36-year-old lawyer trained in the best foreign universities who was part of the group of technocrats who spoke into the president's ear, distributed more than 10 million dollars among the political leadership of the country and pocketed another four.
The Odebrecht bubble in Mexico burst this week when a statement was released in full that no one has denied. Emilio Lozoya explains during his confession that all the payments were made by order of Luis Videgaray — Secretary of the Treasury and Chancellor and the man closest to Peña Nieto — but that he was the one who introduced the president and Luis Weyll, director of Odebrecht Mexico, to who he had known before the campaign. "But by 2013, Odebrecht already had the president on its side and the relationship between Odebrecht and the Mexican State was not a relationship of contracts, but of power." Regarding Felipe Calderón, he denounces that during his government "solid corruption schemes were developed with Odebrecht" and links him to the irregular sale of a company of agricultural products. Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) assures that he lobbied for Pemex contracts for his son.
Energy reform
In addition to his bosses —Peña Nieto and Videgaray— the worst unemployed in this confession are the opposition deputies, the conservative PAN, who he assures that they “extorted money” and pressed demanding more and more money in exchange for supporting the energy reform.
Lozoya also says that money was given to senators Ernesto Cordero, Francisco Domínguez Servién, Jorge Luis Lavalle Maury, Salvador Vega Casillas. "Odebrecht knew of its influence and subjection, so it was not going to lose it, since it actively participated in the country's energy policy," summarizes Lozoya.
All those named have defended themselves by accusing Lozoya of inventing the story to get rid of jail. The former leader of Pemex is under house arrest, testifies as a protected witness and the confession will allow him to see his sentence reduced. Calderón pointed to López Obrador as an instigator and denounced that the president has been detailing in his daily press conferences the names that Lozoya's imputation should include. For his part, Ricardo Anaya said that it is a desperate act of a culprit and for the governor of Tamaulipas "Lozoya is a confessed criminal who should be behind bars but has become a political-electoral ally of López Obrador."
But beyond the specific names, the 63 pages are a crude portrait of corruption in Mexico and the way of handling public money. The statement describes the day that, at the foot of the ladder, the governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte - currently imprisoned for corruption - gave Peña Nieto a 1954 Ferrari. Aboard the presidential plane, the telegenic president who led the The new PRI that would modernize Mexico, opened a bottle of Vega Sicilia to celebrate. The idea that Peña Nieto had one day to build a museum ended up being a warehouse to store cash, as Lozoya revealed to the prosecutor.
The president's frivolity count was the icing on the cake to an intense week of leaks and videos with mountains of money passed from hand to hand that has shaken Mexico like few times. The investigation that Agent Machado began in Brazil ended four years later in the hands of Judge Sergio Moro and ended the government of Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva in prison. At that time, Agent Machado had been removed from the case and was, like Mexico, on sick leave due to depression.
A continent bribed by a construction company
Until now, Mexico had rid itself of the Odebrecht trail of corruption, which has devastated the ruling class wherever it has passed. In 11 Latin American countries, the Brazilian construction company corrupted more than a thousand officials and investigations have led to resignations and legal proceedings against hundreds of presidents, ministers or deputies throughout the continent. The investigations began in Brazil, where it caused the downfall of the Dilma Rousseff government and ended former President Lula da Silva in jail. In Peru, the Odebrecht revelations have reached three leaders: Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala. Another former president, Alan García, shot himself when his name appeared in the complaints. In Colombia, accusations about the financing of their electoral campaigns peppered former presidents Juan Manuel Santos and Álvaro Uribe. As has happened in Panama, with former President Ricardo Martinelli. There are open investigations in Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador. However, until Wednesday Mexico remained on the sidelines.In his confession, Lozoya has involved 17 politicians of all colors but the most serious accusations point to Enrique Peña Nieto and Luis Videgaray, his star minister during the six years he was in power (2012-2018). In addition, two more former presidents Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) are cited; two former presidential candidates, José Antonio Meade and Ricardo Anaya; three governors in office (that of Tamaulipas, that of Querétaro and that of Puebla); two former directors of Pemex, and several senators from the PAN and the PRI.