10% of Morena's salary: the INE points to Delfina Gómez for a financing network of the party in Texcoco

The Secretary of Education, Delfina Gómez, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a ceremony in the State of Mexico in 2019.Diego Simón

Employee letters announced their purpose above the heading, in the upper right corner. "Subject: request a discount." That "discount" was a 10% withholding of the salaries of at least dozens of municipal workers from Texcoco destined for the Political Action Group, a current of Morena in the State of Mexico. The voluntary contributions date back to a stage that coincides with the beginnings of Andrés Manuel López Obrador's party, between February 2013 and July 2015, and amounts to 12.8 million pesos. In the receipts of the money orders made every 15 days by the City Council, the so-called check policies, include, among others, the signature of Delfina Gómez, current secretary of Public Education and then municipal president of Texcoco.

This is stated in a draft resolution that the National Electoral Institute (INE) had planned to discuss this Wednesday and that it will finally address on Friday in a session of the general council. The investigation by the electoral authority, to which EL PAÍS has had access, is part of a complaint filed by the National Action Party (PAN) in April 2017. The 241-page brief exposes Gómez for authorizing this financing system . However, he encircles the punishment to Morena. The Secretary of Education, in the last days in the first line of the Government's political action for the return to classes, assumed the position of mayor in 2013 and left it in 2015 to attend the federal elections of that year, in which obtained a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. During his tenure at Texcoco,one accelerated his career while the National Regeneration Movement consolidated as a party.

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The INE's audit found indications that at least part of the withholdings from municipal employees' salaries ended up in financing that electoral campaign, but it did not prove that these sums were directly linked to the candidacy of Delfina Gómez. Yes, on the other hand, it proved that “the suppliers that had a commercial relationship with the Morena national political party received resources from the salary withholdings to the workers of the Municipality of Texcoco and the DIF System [Integral Development of the Family] Texcoco for an amount of $ 2,114,612.53 (two million one hundred fourteen thousand six hundred twelve pesos 53/100 MN) ”.

These deliveries were made by María Victoria Anaya Campos, a City Council employee hired with a position of "trust" of the municipal president, according to the corporation's labor relations table included in the INE report. In one of the letters from the workers provided, dated April 1, 2013, it reads, for example: “I have come to request that [...] until my employment relationship ends, in my own right and voluntarily I made a discount of 10% of my salary to be transmitted to the Political Action Group, which must be granted to C. María Victoria Anaya Campos, in order to suit my particular interests ”.

The electoral authority foresees a sanction corresponding to 200% of the money diverted. That is to say, 4.2 million pesos. The proposed resolution concludes that the elements collected in the investigation are "constitutive of direct fraud, by deducing the specific intention of the Morena political party to obtain resources from wage deductions." The organism qualifies the lack of "serious special, by virtue of having violated the values ​​and substantial principles protected by the electoral legislation", and launches a warning to sailors: of this authority, to the applicable legislation in matters of supervision and financing of the obligated subjects, as well as to the principles of certainty, legality, impartiality,objectivity and transparency that should guide its activity ”.

The defense argument of Delfina Gómez assures "that due process has been breached, since fact and law situations have been established that are unrelated to the complaint and cannot be detached from the investigation." The INE rejects the PAN's thesis, which openly links these contributions to Morena's constitution, but the resolution proposal calls for investigations that may be initiated by the judicial authorities. “This General Council considers it appropriate to give a hearing to the Attorney General's Office of the State of Mexico for the conduct that could constitute electoral crimes; to the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Electoral Crimes for allegedly consecutive conduct of crimes in electoral matters; and the Financial Intelligence Unit for conducts that could constitute crimes within its sphere of competence, ”the document reads.

Like the Electoral Tribunal, the National Electoral Institute, which has faced a particularly intense year due to the midterm elections of June 6, the largest in the history of Mexico, has been immersed in a fight with the López Obrador government for months. Despite having also issued resolutions against the rest of the parties, the president sees in the decisions of the autonomous body a campaign against the ruling party. The president has not only repeatedly attacked his president, Lorenzo Córdova, and his advisers, accusing them of having boycotted the popular consultation of August 1, but he has also proposed an electoral reform that questions the future of the institution and the continuity of its current members. Córdova has resisted pressure and lamented the interference of political power,that were especially evident to the

and the cancellation of the candidacy of the Obradorista leader to the governorship of Guerrero.

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