Ricardo Anaya's lawyers during his arrival at the North Prison in Mexico City (Mexico). Isaac Esquivel (EFE)
The judge's patience is over.
Up to four times, Ricardo Anaya's lawyers had managed to postpone the hearing of his client before a magistrate of the North Prison, where Emilio Lozoya remains imprisoned preventively for the millionaire bribes of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
The former director of Pemex is the epicenter of a cause that is advancing in fits and starts.
The Attorney General's Office (FGR) charged Anaya last summer for his participation in bribery.
Since then, the former PAN candidate during the last presidential elections appeared at the first court hearing by videoconference after announcing that he was leaving the country.
Summoned again this Monday, the judge rejected further extensions due to Anaya's failure to appear.
The decision opens the door to an imminent arrest warrant.
The case of the opposition leader is following the same route as one of the last accused of the corruption plot.
The last director of Pemex during the PRI government, Carlos Treviño, was also charged in the summer.
Treviño announced his departure from the country.
After not appearing before the judge in a couple of citations, the consequence was the arrest warrant requested by the Prosecutor's Office and accepted by the magistrate.
In Anaya's case, all that remains is for the Prosecutor's Office to press the button.
The lawyers informed the judge, in fact, that they do not know the whereabouts of their client.
On August 21, when Anaya learned that he was being investigated and that his indictment for crimes that could add up to 30 years in prison was imminent, he announced that he was leaving Mexico for what he considered a political persecution orchestrated by the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Since then, Anaya has reappeared through some videos.
In October he returned to justify his situation as a political movement and presented the investigation folder of the case, which has more than 130,000 pages, which is why the defense had requested more time.
Anaya's accusation stems from the cataract of accusations launched by the former director of Pemex after being arrested two years ago in a luxury urbanization in Spain.
Since his extradition to Mexico in the summer of 2020, Lozoya did not set foot in jail until just four months ago.
The powerful former head of the state oil company had managed to avoid any direct contact with the Justice thanks to an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office.
Accused of the crimes of laundering, criminal association and bribery for at least 10 million dollars, he became a kind of protected collaborating witness.
Lozoya launched a storm of accusations, including three former presidents, two presidential candidates and 11 legislators.
Among them, Ricardo Anaya, whom he accused of having received 6.8 million pesos in a sports bag in the parking lot of the Chamber of Deputies in exchange for his vote in favor of Enrique Peña Nieto's energy reform.
Lozoya's lifeguard seems in any case further and further away.
The Prosecutor's Office hardened his position in November, which led to the imprisonment of the former director of Pemex, by failing to tie up the accusations.
The new strategy of the Prosecutor's Office was confirmed with the recent one with the formal indictment for the Odebrecht case, which includes charges of money laundering, bribery and criminal association: 39 years in total, the highest sentence for this type of crime.
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