The daughter of former PRI president Manlio Fabio Beltrones closed her account in Andorra after an information leak

The Mexican senator of the PRI Sylvana Beltrones in a working session. SOCIAL NETWORKS

The senator of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Sylvana Beltrones, the only daughter of the one who was president of the tricolor formation until 2016 and one of the most relevant figures in Mexican politics, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, closed her account in the Private Banking d 'Andorra (BPA), where it accumulated 10.4 million dollars, after a leak of information about the entity's clients, according to an investigation by EL PAÍS.

When the PRI senator closed her deposit in the BPA (2011) with 10.4 million, she was 26 years old, did not hold any public office and her father was the influential coordinator of the PRI formation in the upper house.

Andorra, of 77,000 inhabitants, remained shielded by bank secrecy until 2017.

The 38-year-old parliamentarian and representative for Sonora, canceled her deposit in the Pyrenean country after learning that the inspectors of the National Banking and Securities Commission of Mexico (CNBV) - a supervisory body of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP ) - A USB stick with sensitive information about the bank's clients was taken from the Mexican office of the BPA.

This was declared to an Andorran judge in 2016 by the one who was the manager of his account, the director of the BPA-Mexico until 2013, Joan March Masson;

and the editor Luis Alejandro Capdevielle, former partner of this policy in a business in Mexico City with whom he also shared an account in the aforementioned entity.

Although the financial regulator's inspectors visited the BPA-Mexico headquarters “by surprise” to collect sensitive information “at the end of 2010” –according to the former executive-, Senator Beltrones did not close her account until April 2011, when Masson informed Capdevielle the incident of the USB memory and this was told, in turn, to the parliamentary today, according to the editor himself declared to the Andorran judge who instructed the case.

“At the end of 2010, there was an inspection by the National Banking Commission of Mexico.

JB, a BPA employee had a USB stick on his desk with customer data.

It was sensitive information.

I explained to Capdevielle that [the inspectors] took this report, but that he did not know if his data appeared in it, "the manager of Sylvana Beltrones' bank account told the Andorran magistrate in 2016.

The former BPA director admitted that the risk of an information leak was the trigger that pushed the senator to close her warehouse.

"Beltrones decided to close his account when the National Banking Commission of Mexico took the USB memory, transferred the money to Capdevielle and his funds did not leave the entity," Masson confessed to the judge.

"Beltrones is a well-known family in Mexico and they did not know what repercussions it could have if it became known that [the daughter of the former PRI president] had an account abroad," he added.

The former manager of Sylvana Beltrones' account thus alluded to the long sphere of influence of the senator's father.

During his more than four decades of militancy in the PRI, Manlio Fabio Beltrones has planned for all the nooks and crannies of power.

He was a deputy, senator, governor of the State of Sonora, president of the board of directors of the Deputies and the Senate.

And, in 2011, he even presented and withdrew his presidential candidacy against a then emerging Enrique Peña Nieto, who would later take over the leadership of the country.

The

senator, executor of the editor

Following the closure of his account, Beltrones transferred his balance to the deposit of Capdevielle, editor, lawyer and substitute federal deputy in 2012 of the father of the parliamentarian.

This communication businessman then granted powers in his Andorran account to the daughter of Manlio Fabio Beltrones, whom he had appointed as his executor in 2006, according to Masson told the magistrate and the editor corroborated in his judicial statement.

“To protect my children and my estate, I named Sylvana the executor in 2006, a will that has never been modified to date,” Capdevielle said in 2016.

EL PAÍS has a document where the editor designates the daughter of the former president of the PRI in charge of enforcing his last will.

This newspaper tried yesterday without success to obtain the version of the parliamentarian on this matter.

Capdevielle also acknowledged to the magistrate that Sylvana Beltrones canceled her account at the BPA in April 2011 after the USB memory was seized.

"Masson told me in April 2011 that there was a leak of information, that those of the Banking and Securities Commission of Mexico were in the office and that they took a USB with customer information," the editor recalled.

And he added "at that time, I decided that [Sylvana Beltrones] would return the nine million and what she had in her account and proceeded to close her deposit."

The editor alluded to a mysterious transfer of nine million dollars that he ordered to the senator's account on December 30, 2009. The entry was the subject of an investigation - provisionally archived in 2018 - by the Andorran justice, since it was registered a week after Capdevielle collected in the European country 10 million dollars from Videoserpel LTD, a firm from Zug (Switzerland) that manages the rights of brands of Grupo Televisa.

At the time, the principality judge placed Grupo Televisa's payment to Capdevielle in an indirect commission to Manlio Fabio Beltrones for the so-called Televisa Law, which was approved unanimously in 2006, three years before the transfer under suspicion.

The regulation introduced important modifications to the Federal Law of Radio Television and the Federal Law of Telecommunications.

A spokesperson for this Mexican audiovisual conglomerate rejected that the law entailed a favorable treatment for Televisa or another communication group.

Televisa admits the payment to the editor for the purchase of its newspaper Avisos de Ocasión and adds that "the fate that Mr. Capdevielle gave to those resources and his relationship with the Beltrones family only correspond to him."

Senator Beltrones justified EL PAÍS on the 9th that she closed her account at the BPA in 2011, when Capdevielle "had her personal divorce situation settled", alluding to the fact that the editor transferred nine million to her on time to protect her assets from her marital separation.

"He asked me to keep the 9 million for him," he says.

Capdevielle maintains the same version and assures that he did not know another person in the Andorran bank to ask him to agree to "guard" his fortune.

Another Mexican personality who hid funds in the BPA, Juan Ramón Collado, lawyer for former President Enrique Peña Nieto, also stated in his statement before a judge in Andorra in 2016 that the former director of the bank Joan March Masson warned him in 2010 of the risk of a “ information leakage".

A gap, acknowledged the lawyer, which could be settled with the leakage of the client relationship of the financial institution.

Collado, who moved 120 million dollars in the European country between 2006 and 2015 through 23 bank accounts, appeared before the Andorran magistrate as accused of an alleged crime of money laundering.

The Attorney General's Office of Mexico tracks the movements of the Beltrones family in Andorra, as this newspaper revealed.

The public prosecutor investigates Manlio Fabio Beltrones, his daughter and his wife, Sylvia Sánchez, for alleged irregularities of the latter two with hidden accounts in the BPA.

The partner of the former PRI president opened two accounts in this entity that did not register movements, despite the fact that he announced his intention to enter 2.8 million dollars from the alleged sale of two apartments in Miami, as Sylvia Sánchez herself communicated to the bank.

The Mexican prosecutor's office thus reactivates the investigations into the Beltrones and Capdevielle after the public prosecutor itself during the presidential term of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) deactivated the investigation of a judge from Andorra in 2018 by sending documents to this European country that exonerated those investigated and justified the prescription of possible crimes by the PRI family.

In the new Mexican investigation, in addition to requesting information from the Andorran authorities, their assets, accounts, properties and tax returns are being investigated.

A magistrate from the Pyrenean country held the three members of the Beltrones saga and the editor Capdevielle charged between 2015 and 2018 for money laundering in the framework of a cause known as Operation Sonora, alluding to the Mexican state of which Manlio Fabio Beltrones was governor between 1991 and 1997 and of which his daughter is a representative in the upper house.

In 2018 the Andorran case was provisionally closed.

investigacion@elpais.es

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