AKUMAL, Mexico.– Antonio Manrique Mac named the three cenotes he visited every day and which were his for 23 years.
When he arrived in Akumal, in the Riviera Maya, four decades ago, he worked extracting chicle from the sapote tree and, as payment, in 1999 the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform gave him a ranch with three cenotes and a river. Underground.
The cenote that Manrique named 'La Caverna' is covered with stalactites and stalagmites.
It is so beautiful that it was once the scene of a Mexican television program, and it gives its name to the 115-hectare ranch that Manrique won and that, according to the lawyer who represents him, he sold little by little, until only the last one remained. plot: 37 hectares of land that, without meaning to, slipped out of his hands, three years ago, in a notary's office in Mérida, Yucatán.
In that office, the seven-kilometer underground river and 'La Caverna', 'Aluxe' and 'Jaguar', its three cenotes, also left.
Since April 2019, the owner is no longer Manrique;
the owner is José María Rejón, brother-in-law of the governor of Quintana Roo, Carlos Joaquín González.
Antonio Manrique was left without a ranch and without money.
Antonio Manrique arrived in Akumal when the Riviera Maya was just jungle. Aldo Meza.
News Telemundo Investigates
The native language of Antonio Manrique Mac, 73, is Mayan, he speaks Spanish with difficulty, and he has a lesion in the left temporal lobe that causes intermittent memory loss, epileptic seizures and generalized cerebral atrophy, according to a medical certificate dated in January 2020 which was obtained by Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
“It was the simulation of a sale”
In August 2019, with the help of his daughter, Manrique denounced three people for "theft, fraud and dispossession of my property in which I lived for 40 years" before the Quintana Roo prosecutor's office.
Those people are Jose Wilbert Kumul (his wife's brother), Cecilia Castillo (a family acquaintance), and José María Rejón (the governor's brother-in-law).
"What happened here was the simulation of a sales contract,"
says Fabiola Cortés, Manrique's lawyer.
"It is not the same to make a deal with a person with studies and a perfect command of Spanish than to do it with a person who has a disability," she adds.
Antonio Manrique, 73 years old. Erick Durán.
News Telemundo Investigates
At the beginning of 2018, Manrique Mac met, through his wife's brother, José Wilbert Kumul, Cecilia Castillo, with whom the family gained more trust over the months.
Castillo offered to sell the ranch because Gabriela Rejón, the governor's wife and José María Rejón's sister, "liked your ranch, the caverns, she is in love with that property," according to Manrique's complaint.
On April 29, 2019, Castillo arrived home with a vehicle full of men – identified by Manrique as police officers – who took him to a notary's office in Mérida, Yucatán, to sign the sale of the ranch.
"They kept threatening me that if I didn't sign, I would end up in jail," Manrique said in the complaint.
On video: We toured the caverns that are in danger due to the construction of the Mayan Train
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"Cecilia entered and hugged a person she referred to at the time as "Pepe Rejón", they entered the notary's office and lasted there for about two hours," the complaint continues.
Noticias Telemundo Investiga obtained a video that includes part of the sale operation
.
Antonio Manrique Mac appears in the center of the image. On the left, the buyer, José María Rejón, appears.
On the right, the notary, Rodolfo Cerón, in charge of certifying the deed of sale.
At one point, the notary says, to the laughter of those present: “I'm not going to read it.
If not, we will go out tomorrow.”
Noticias Telemundo Investiga contacted Rodolfo Cerón, but declined to comment.
Moment of signing the purchase sale.
Rodolfo Cerón, notary 85 (right), José María Rejón (left) and Antonio Manrique (center). Special
“The notary is there to attest that the person who is signing has the capacity, that he has the will and, in this case, we see a total lack of will.
He did not know, he did not understand, he did not understand, ”says Cortés, Manrique's lawyer.
Concepción Manrique, Antonio's daughter, assures that her father never agreed on a price nor did he know that he was selling the ranch: “My dad did not know that they had bought the ranch from him, much less for how much.
Obviously, he never negotiated.
He always said that he would never sell that ranch because it was his sons' estate."
He owns a 3,700-acre ranch with three cenotes.
Someone bought it but he wasn't selling it
May 11, 202200:54
394,736 dollars disappear from the bank
It was the notary Rodolfo Cerón who was in charge of requesting an appraisal that established the price of the ranch at seven and a half million pesos (394,736 dollars).
In the deed it is reflected that José María Rejón deposited, as part of the payment, two checks for one million pesos (52,383 dollars)
In the days that followed, someone transferred $68,389 (1,299,404 pesos) to another account to pay the taxes for the sale and purchase transaction and to the notary.
Noticias Telemundo Investiga could not verify who made the transfer.
Days later, according to the bank receipts in the possession of Noticias Telemundo Investiga, transfers were made for 37,000 dollars (the rest of the two million pesos) to another unknown account.
Concepción, Manrique's daughter, assures that they did not want to sell Erick Durán.
News Telemundo Investigates
On July 22, 2019, José María Rejón transferred 289,473 dollars (5.5 million pesos) to the account of Antonio Manrique Mac, for the rest of the payment of 394,736 dollars
(
7.5 million pesos) established in the deed.
However, the next day, one million pesos ($52,631) came out of Antonio Manrique Mac's account in a cashier's check made out to José María Rejón.
That same day, a transfer of 231,578 dollars (4.4 million pesos) was made to another unknown bank account.
In other words, on one day José María Rejón deposited 289,473 dollars (5.5 million pesos) into Antonio Manrique Mac's account, and the next day, someone took out the money.
Antonio Manrique never saw the 394,736 dollars
(
7.5 million pesos) of the established payment.
Bank receipt that records the movements from the account of Antonio Manrique Mac. Among them, the cashier's check in the name of José María Rejón.Noticias Telemundo Investiga
Fabiola Cortés assures that she asked the National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Financial Services Users (CONDUSEF) for the name of the bank account holders, but they denied this request, arguing that only the Quintana Roo Prosecutor's Office can request this information.
One of the three cenotes that were owned by Manrique.
Aldo Mesa.
News Telemundo Investigates
Noticias Telemundo Investiga tried to contact José Maria Rejón without success.
After several messages, Cecilia Castillo blocked this reporter's phone.
Jose Wilbert Kumul could never be located.
His sister, the wife of Antonio Manrique Mac, does not know where he is.
This is all illegal"
Fabiola Cortés Manrique Lawyer
Antonio Manrique Mac and his family assure that months before the purchase and sale of the ranch, Gabriela Rejón de Joaquín, wife of Carlos Joaquín González, governor of Quintana Roo, went to visit them.
Noticias Telemundo Investiga contacted Fernando Mora, spokesman for the state government.
In a letter, he affirmed that the governor and his wife "have not intervened in any case related to an alleged dispossession of a property."
Regarding the participation of José María Rejón, Mora points out that "the operation was carried out without acting ill will."
Lawyer Fabiola Cortés assures that Manrique was dispossessed. Erick Durán.
News Telemundo Investigates
When in August 2019, Antonio Manrique Mac accused José María Rejón, Cecilia Castillo and Jose Wilbert Kumul of theft, fraud and dispossession, he never had a lawyer to advise him in the legal process.
After three months, the Prosecutor's Office determined that there was no crime to prosecute.
“All of this is illegal, because although they appointed a defender from the state Victims Commission, she never contacted him and Manrique was left with total legal defenselessness.
No one advised him, no one defended him.
That is absolutely a violation of human rights, because he was never able to defend himself, ”says his lawyer, Fabiola Cortés.
In response, the lawyer, who took the case in October 2020, filed an amparo before a federal court against the Prosecutor's Office closing the investigation and for the case to be re-investigated.
However, the federal judge, Nicolás Pinzón, confirmed that there is no crime to prosecute José María Rejón.
Antonio Manrique rests on a hammockErick Durán.
News Telemundo Investigates
For his part, in April 2020, José María Rejón denounced Antonio Manrique Mac for the crimes of false testimony and false accusations.
The Prosecutor's Office has not yet concluded this investigation.
Currently, Antonio Manrique Mac's lawyer has filed a civil lawsuit in a local court to declare the sale null and void.
There is no resolution date yet.
If you know of a similar case that you want to publicize, you can contact the author of this report at aldo.meza@nbcuni.com
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