The research which was carried out by Justice Department about alleged financing of the Sinaloa Cartel in the presidential campaigns of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2006 and 2018have generated a worry real of president because he doesn't know if there are really videos where his children receiving money of the narcoas pointed out by several witnesses in files that were closed for political and diplomatic reasons.
Since the first newspaper reports appeared almost a month ago, the president has held meetings regular with Alejandro Esquer, his private secretary, to inform you, clarify or confirm if there are videos, photographs or audios that involve any of your children or your close circle receiving money for the campaigns. It has not been discussed, as it has emerged, that it is money from the drug traffickinglimiting the request to cash resources that could have reached the campaign irregularly.
López Obrador has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, but the label of “narcopresident” in the social networks, which increasingly irritates him due to its increasingly widespread use in public opinion. To try to neutralize it, a -failed- strategy has been developed in the propaganda office run by the presidential spokesperson, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, but the most critical part, the possibility that videos of his closest people receiving cash, is the which would have a potentially devastating effect.
Irregular financing of presidential campaigns has been the subject of public discussion for at least three years. Recently Jesús Ortega, who was the coordinator of López Obrador's presidential campaign in 2006, said in a press interview that those who managed the campaign resources were Octavio Romero, current director of Pemex and who for decades has been in charge of the economy of the president's eldest children, the son of Julio Scherer, whose father was a powerful legal advisor to the Presidency in the first part of the six-year term, Leonel Cota, who managed the money of the PRD – when it had not yet left and Morena was born – , the columnist at the service of the power in power Federico Arreola – currently in the war room of the candidate Claudia Sheinbaum -, and Esquer himself.
Ortega did not specify the origin of the resources, although one of the Department of Justice investigations found witnesses who told DEA agents that at least two million dollars had been contributed by the Sinaloa Cartel. López Obrador's response was to accuse the three journalists who published details of the investigations referring to the 2006 presidential campaign as slanderers.
Information about opaque financing in the 2018 campaign directly involves Esquer. An investigation by Mexicans Against Corruption at the end of 2020 found that Morena's then Secretary of Finance hired ghost suppliers with a company that was listed as a simulator of commercial operations for tax evasion purposes. A year later, in December, the same organization revealed that Esquer and Denis Zaharula Vasto, current general coordinator of Administration of the Office of the Presidency, carried out an operation of ant deposits in December 2017 to a trust that was supposedly for the victims of the earthquake that year, from which they supposedly withdrew 44 and a half million pesos that ended up in political campaigns.
None of these revelations linked the resources to organized crime, as has been the case until recently with the detail of several investigations by agencies that depend on the United States Department of Justice, which are the ones that have triggered the concern of the president, particularly his son Gonzalo, who according to a book by sociologist Hernán Gómez Bruera, “Betrayal in the Palace: the business of justice of the 4T”, focused on former legal advisor Scherer, is the one who was involved in the financing of his presidential campaign. father.
He was not the only one involved in raising resources. According to the information obtained, former counselor Scherer, Tatiana Clouthier, who was López Obrador's campaign coordinator in 2018 and later Secretary of Economy, and Alejandra Fraustro, whom he appointed head of Culture, also participated. There were other people who contributed to the collection of resources, but the central concern in the National Palace is in the most intimate group that received the money.
The possibility that there is documentary evidence of having received cash is an issue that has been circulating in the Presidency for more than two years, when they detected the existence of videos that, they feared, could be released. So far they have not been able to find out who could have those videos, which have not been made public either. It's unclear if the president's current concern is related to those videos, or if there is fear that it is a different package than those.
López Obrador has been asking Esquer for details of his agenda during the 2018 presidential campaign, and all the information on the people he and the others responsible for raising resources met with, who reported to the current private secretary. Strangely, the identification of donors and the amounts is an issue that has not left the control of the National Palace, and the National Intelligence Center has not been involved, so far, which could contribute to determining whether or not the donors had relationships. suspected of organized crime.
The issue of irregular or illegal financing of his campaigns has hit López Obrador in public opinion in an ephemeral manner, which is why there have been no consequences for his image and popularity, which is what matters most to him. But the alleged financing of the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas, investigated by the Department of Justice until it closed the investigations so as not to confront the Mexican government and have a political dispute, is something else, and puts the magnifying glass of presidential concern on its 2018 campaign and possible international legal problems for López Obrador's entourage.
X: @rivapa
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