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Battle in the shadows: the Gertz case and his conflict with Scherer shake the deep waters of power

2022-03-27T04:59:04.739Z


The Supreme Court will debate this Monday the possible release of the prosecutor's niece while the confrontation with presidential adviser Julio Scherer intensifies


Julio Scherer and Alejandro Gertz Manero, during an event.Galo Cañas/CUARTOSCURO

The attack targeted two of the heavyweights of Mexican political power.

So far, only one has responded.

The invective was launched by Julio Scherer last weekend against the Attorney General, Alejandro Gertz, and the former Secretary of the Interior and current President of the Senate, Olga Sánchez Cordero.

In an article in the weekly

Proceso,

The former legal adviser to the Presidency accused both of putting together a conspiracy “for personal reasons”, a judicial hunt concocting cases against him.

Sánchez Cordero's response acknowledged having had "differences" with Scherer in addition to pointing out that there are "some inaccuracies" in his article.

Neither the Prosecutor's Office nor Gertz himself have said anything yet.

Everything seems to be at the expense of the ruling, scheduled for this Monday, of the Supreme Court on one of the centers of gravity of the entanglement: the crusade opened by the prosecutor himself against his political family.

An apparently private judicial process that threatens to shake the upper echelons of the Four Transformation.

The highest Mexican court opened the door last week to get the prosecutor's niece out of jail and free her sister-in-law from charges.

Alejandra Cuevas and Laura Morán were denounced in 2015 by Gertz for negligence and abandonment after the death that same year of their brother, Federico Gertz.

The capital prosecutor's office filed the complaint, but with the arrival of Gertz at the Federal Prosecutor's Office, the case was reopened.

Cuevas has been in prison since 2020 and Morán faces an arrest warrant.

The magistrates presented last week a project that anticipated the granting of amparos for both, daughter and wife of Gertz's brother for more than 40 years.

Previous documentation from the Court, which is not public for the parties, to which the Attorney General himself would have already had access.

This is clear from a leaked video earlier this month where the prosecutor regrets, in a conversation with his right-hand man, Juan Ramos, the content of the Court's project and boasts of numerous contacts with the magistrates during the preparation of the opinion.

The puncture reveals not only the importance that Gertz gives to the case but also the depth of the plot around it, which includes several fronts: the tensions at the University of the Americas in Puebla, the permanent conflict with Santiago Nieto, former head of the Unit of Financial Intelligence (UIF), or the confrontation with Scherer himself, who maintains that he helped her reach the Prosecutor's Office.

It is striking that someone has recorded the prosecutor's call with his closest collaborator and has decided to publish it.

All a few days before the hearing in which the Prosecutor's Office formally accused four lawyers from Scherer's environment for alleged extortion, money laundering, influence peddling and criminal association.

In his article, Scherer defends himself against a complaint that derives from the case of Juan Collado, the lawyer for the powerful in Mexico, imprisoned two years ago for money laundering and organized crime, targeting Sánchez Cordero.

Collado pointed out that the accused lawyers had asked him for almost 100 million dollars to process his release from prison, citing his closeness to Scherer, then still a legal adviser to the Presidency.

Scherer responds in the text that he only received and listened to Collado's family, who offered him 100 million dollars, from an account in Andorra, as compensation for the damage in the context of the trial against his father.

The former counselor of the Presidency also points to Sánchez Cordero, "very close to the Collado family", as the person who mediated in the negotiations.

Scherer's text also mentions the Gertz in-laws case as well as a handful of other allegedly fabricated investigations against him.

Given the seriousness of the accusations, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has preferred for the moment to put himself in profile.

Scherer is already out of the Cabinet.

After his departure, he defined him "almost like a brother".

And given the many open fronts around Gertz, the president has also closed ranks with him.

Gertz, 82, still has five left, until 2028, at the head of a Prosecutor's Office that charged the inks with the case of the political family, his boss.

And that the ruling of the Supreme Court could be a severe setback.

That is the main focus of the crossing of accusations at the moment.

According to Scherer, the prosecutor asked him for "a single favor", although he assures that he denied it.

That is, “to prevent her sister-in-law Laura Morán and her daughter, Alejandra Cuevas Morán, from obtaining amparo for the accusation of the murder of her brother Federico, of which he accuses them.”

The refusal, according to this version, made the prosecutor furious, a man who has been linked to the power of the day for decades and after working with the PRI, the PAN and the PRD is today one of López's trusted high-ranking officials. Workshop.

That is why the plot is also a time bomb within the Fourth Transformation: because of its scope, because it has already generated factions in Morena's ranks and because of all the unknowns of the case.

So much so that the head of senators from Morena,

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-03-27

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