The case has it all.
A US company linked to a former official of Enrique Peña Nieto received, under suspicion of corruption and influence peddling, multimillion-dollar contracts from the state company Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE).
However, the controversy is out of the public spotlight, that is, from the noise that the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, usually generates in each disputed.
Both the president and the director of CFE, Manuel Bartlett, remain silent on the Whitewater Midstream case while the government insists on its decision to limit the participation of private companies in the electricity sector.
The little immediate political benefit is the argument given by the analysts consulted.
Whitewater's name began to generate noise in the Mexican energy sector before López Obrador won the presidential election.
In early 2018, sources in Mexico expressed amazement at the size of one of the contracts awarded to the
inexperienced
startup .
Guillermo Turrent, as director of the private arm of the parastatal, CFE International, would have put in the hands of the unknown Texas company the supply of 15% of the daily demand for natural gas imports from Mexico.
Along with a handful of other traders, Whitewater supplied CFE with fuel during February 2021, when extremely low temperatures sent natural gas prices skyrocketing in Texas.
CFE, under instructions from Bartlett, refused to pay the cost overrun, so the companies began arbitration proceedings.
Shortly after, in July, EL PAÍS published an investigation, begun in 2018, that exposed ties between Turrent and Whitewater executives dating back to 2000. Ten days later, on July 16, the Presidency issued a statement, in conjunction with CFE, in which they reported that Mexican and US authorities launched an investigation into Whitewater Midstream "for delivery of contracts on suspicion of corruption, breach of trust and influence peddling."
To date, there are at least seven known contracts between CFE International and Whitewater, valued at billions of dollars.
Two other former CFE officials, Javier Gutiérrez and José Guadalupe Valdez, both with positions close to Turrent, appear in internal documents as the executors of at least one of the agreements with Whitewater, according to what CFE has said in hearings before the Prosecutor's Office. Anti Corruption.
Among his most important findings is a US company owned by Gutiérrez, JG Energy, which received more than 250,000 dollars while the former official worked at the CFE.
JG Energy was registered with the same address as one of Whitewater's founders.
Meanwhile, the parties move behind the scenes.
The US embassy in Mexico has approached analysts they trust to ask about Whitewater.
CFE has hired the prestigious law firm Paul, Weiss in Texas to gain legal ground there.
This office has approached a US media outlet to share its findings, which indicates that, in silence, CFE has put all the meat on the grill.
Until the publication of this article, and since last year, CFE has not responded to several requests for information from EL PAÍS.
That statement issued in July 2021 was the last time that CFE spoke about Whitewater, a case that has gained relevance from the consultations initiated last month by the US and Canada within the framework of the free trade agreement.
Mexico defends its decision to return the electricity monopoly to CFE, while its trading partners allege that this violates the TMEC.
In courts in the US, Gutiérrez's lawyers have taken advantage of the situation.
"The AMLO government has ruthlessly sought all necessary means to reclaim the Mexican government's monopoly on natural gas and other energy products," Gutierrez's lawyers wrote to the judge, according to official court documents in Texas.
Gutiérrez "is one of dozens of current and former government employees in the energy sector who have been unfairly targeted by AMLO's crusade," they say.
Analysts agree that linking a case of possible corruption, such as that of Whitewater, with the TMEC inquiries would be wrong.
“We would be mixing apples and pears,” says Alejandro Schtulmann, president of emerging-markets risk consultancy Empra in Mexico City.
“What the United States is saying is that a trading partner is violating the principles of the treaty.
Here it does not have to do with whether there was a case of corruption involving a Canadian or American company.
Bartlett's silence is due to the fact that the Whitewater case does not bring a political benefit to the Government.
The cases of Emilio Lozoya and Rosario Robles "are emblematic" of the Enrique Peña Nieto administration, so the political benefit is to discredit the opposition, explains Schtulmann.
Instead, Turrent and Gutiérrez appear to have acted on their own and without being associated with or protected by any political adversary of López Obrador.
“What we have seen is that corruption is prosecuted when the president can claim political loot,” says Schtulmann, “we are not seeing systematic progress against corruption.
What we see is a very specific targeting of those cases that are politically expedient or that can be politically manipulated to give this government a victory.”
Oscar Ocampo, coordinator of the energy area for the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO) research and analysis center, says about the Whitewater case: "I am very struck by not only the President's silence, but Bartlett's because they tend to be quite a bit more vocal, more strident.”
However, Ocampo argues, calling attention to the possible corruption case of a US company could generate more tension in the bilateral relationship.
“Probably it has to do with not making more noise with the United States on the energy issue, which, in itself, the oven is not for buns,” says the analyst, “because here we are not only talking about the directors of CFE, also we are talking about an American company that is involved in this.”
Perhaps the Mexican government's behind-the-scenes action is to "not buy another lawsuit with the United States government," says Ocampo.
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