AMLO urges Pemex and CFE to finish cleaning up corruption

The state-owned firms have a long history of irregularities

Date: March 18th, 2022

Source: Mexico News Daily

President López Obrador sent a blunt message to the heads of Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) on Friday: immediately end any corruption that still plagues the state-owned firms.

Speaking in Minatitlán, Veracruz, at a ceremony to mark the 84th anniversary of the nationalization of the Mexican oil industry, López Obrador instructed Pemex CEO Octavio Romero and CFE director Manuel Bartlett not to give his adversaries any pretext to criticize the government.

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Mexico arrests state security chief on torture charges

Date: February 2, 2022

Source: ABC News

MEXICO CITY — Federal agents arrested the security chief for the central Mexico state of Aguascalientes on Wednesday on charges of torture, state authorities said.

Porfirio Javier Sánchez Mendoza had served in the state position since 2018. Earlier he held positions in the federal Attorney General’s Office and the now disbanded Federal Police, where he was director of undercover operations.

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Journalists throughout Mexico say enough to killings and crimes against press

MEXICO CITY — Journalists across Mexico took to the streets Tuesday to condemn the killings of colleagues and demand that authorities to do more to protect news gatherers in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the press.

Date: Jan. 25th, 2022

Source: LA Times

Protesters in more than three dozen Mexican cities hoisted images of slain journalists and chanted, “You are not alone!” and “Justice!” in coordinated national actions under the heading “Journalism at Risk.” Triggering the denunciations were the slayings of two journalists within a week this month in the northern border city of Tijuana, long a bastion of organized crime, corruption and violence against the press.

Several journalists from Tijuana addressed protesters gathered outside the Interior Ministry in downtown Mexico City using a telephone and loudspeakers. “We are indignant, we are angry, and we are frightened,” said Inés García, co-founder of the Punto Norte news outlet in Tijuana. “We want and demand that we have guarantees to practice journalism. … We fear for our lives, we fear that another of our colleagues will be attacked.”

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Two journalists exposing Mexico’s corruption and drug violence murdered within one week

01/19/2022

Source: The Guardian

Mexico’s embattled press corps has suffered a shattering start to the new year with the murders of two journalists who had dared chronicle their country’s slide into drug- and corruption-fuelled violence.

Margarito Martínez Esquivel, a crime reporter and photographer who often collaborated with members of the foreign media, was shot dead outside his home in the northern city of Tijuana on Monday lunchtime.

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There is no longer corruption or nepotism in judiciary, declares chief justice

Source: Mexico News Daily

There is no longer institutionalized corruption or nepotism in the federal judiciary, Supreme Court Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar declared Wednesday.

Delivering his third annual report as head of the federal judicial power, Zaldívar said that corruption is no longer tolerated and that only “isolated” cases remain.

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Former anti-corruption czar to be investigated — for corruption

Source: Mexico News Daily

Times have changed for Santiago Nieto, the former head of the federal government’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF).

Until he resigned early last month in the wake of controversy surrounding his lavish wedding celebrations in Guatemala, Nieto was one of the federal government’s leading anti-corruption crusaders.

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Police, prison guards among those who have fled tentacles of organized crime

12/01/2021

Source: Mexico News Daily

Police officers, at least one member of the National Guard and a prison guard have fled to Tijuana in recent months to escape the tentacles of organized crime.

The newspaper El Universal visited a migrants’ shelter in the northern border city where approximately 10 police officers, a guardsman and a female prison guard took refuge after fleeing notoriously violent states such as Guanajuato, Guerrero and Michoacán.

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Investigation reveals links between Sembrando Vida and AMLO’s sons’ cacao plantation

Source: Mexico News Daily

President López Obrador’s adult sons and a childhood friend of one of them are at the center of a new investigation that raises yet more questions about Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life), the federal government’s tree-planting employment program.

Published by six media organizations including the news magazine Proceso and the digital newspaper Aristegui Noticias, the investigation focuses on cacao entrepreneur Hugo Chávez Ayala, his involvement in Sembrando Vida and his connection to a cacao plantation in Tabasco owned by Andrés Manuel López Beltrán and the president’s two other sons from his first marriage.

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Mexico anti-money laundering chief resigns amid scandal

Source: Al Jazeera

The head of Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), the agency in charge of cracking down on money-laundering operations, has resigned following a scandal related to his wedding in Guatemala.

Santiago Nieto, long seen as a trusted ally of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in his campaign to root out corruption, stepped down from the position on Monday.

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Mexican judge jails ex-Pemex boss at center of corruption case

11/04/2021

Source: Reuters

A Mexican judge ordered the incarceration on Wednesday of Emilio Lozoya, the former chief executive of state oil company Pemex, while his corruption trial plays out, in a case critics argued has offered the embattled ex-CEO preferential treatment.

Lozoya was extradited to Mexico from Spain last year and is at the center of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s campaign to expose corruption that he says was rampant in past governments before he took office in late 2018.

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