Javier Corral’s administration awarded contracts to Televisa for 87.5 million pesos, between 2017 and 2021, while the company kept a 15-hectare plot of land in Nombre de Dios seized from him, for a debt of nearly one million pesos that it has not paid since 2004, when the former PAN member ran for governor for the first time.
A few months before the end of his term and after the last contract, the television station withdrew from the sale due to an “agreement between the parties” that was never made public, despite having had it in that condition since 2009.
On Wednesday, May 31, El Diario published that the former governor and Televisa secretly settled their well-known dispute, since the legal dispute that lasted 16 years, which led to the seizure of the former governor’s assets for a multimillion-dollar debt, ended without a clear and transparent position from both parties.
The television station sued the former president for non-payment since 2005, for services rendered in 2004; it was not until 2009 that the court ruled in favor of the company and, faced with the company’s refusal to pay, ordered the seizure first of his house and then of a 15-hectare plot of land, worth four million pesos, deeded in favor of the now Morena candidate for multi-member senator, by his business friend Eduardo Almeida.
The embargo lasted until May 2021, when Televisa declared itself satisfied before the authority that ordered the embargo, but neither the company nor the then governor reported what the payment agreement had been, or when it had been made.
On May 31, 2021, Corral Jurado said that the cancellation of the embargo was “one of the best news of the year.”
“There is absolutely nothing irregular or illegal. On the contrary, I want to tell you that this is one of the best pieces of news I have received this year because finally, after many years of litigation against Televisa, a finely conciliatory agreement was reached last year that put an end to a litigation that I always considered very unfair and that finally the same television station, I must say, ended up accepting that in reality such a lawsuit should never have been filed against me,” said the then governor.
“Once the dispute, which resulted in the seizure of my property in 2009, was concluded, the court was informed of the status of this legal dispute; the judge concluded the conflict and then what is done in any other case was done: the Public Property Registry was informed of the end of this dispute and the seizure was lifted,” he explained, but without giving details of the conciliation agreement.
A very long lawsuit
The conflict between the former governor and the company, according to the civil suit filed in Chihuahua by the Televisa subsidiary, Televisora de Occidente SA de CV, began in 2005, after it provided advertising services for his first campaign for governor in 2004, which he lost to the PRI candidate José Reyes Baeza.
The lawsuit was involved in the controversy over the ban on advertising on radio and television, following legal reforms promoted by, among others, Corral Jurado; and because the litigation advanced amid new reforms against the federal laws on Radio and Television and Telecommunications.
These reforms were used as arguments by the former federal deputy and senator, to qualify this legal claim by Televisa as part of a campaign of intimidation and media lynching against those who promoted the regulation of the television and radio stations, so that they could not make contracts with parties or candidates during electoral periods, given that the regulations would extend the official times in said media outlets, without the need to hire more spaces.
In this context, in May 2007, the Fourth Civil Court sentenced Corral Jurado to pay a bill of 950 thousand pesos to Televisa, a decision that the affected party appealed in other judicial instances, ending up in a federal court.
Corral Jurado lost the lawsuit in 2008 and was sentenced to pay the bill claimed by Televisa, as well as another 400 thousand pesos for the interest accrued due to the breach of the agreement.
The ruling determined that the television station was right in its demand, since it had provided services to the campaign of the candidate for governor and was obliged to pay both him and the party that nominated him, although Jurado claimed that he could not be charged personally.
However, the now ex-governor failed to comply with the court order to pay and in 2009 his house in the El Campanario subdivision, in the city of Chihuahua, was seized; after that, his friend Eduardo Almeida revealed in 2022, he sought help to avoid putting his home at risk, so the alternative that the businessman helped him with was to transfer ownership of an unproductive land without any construction in the Nombre de Dios ejido.
Almeida, as stated in the property deed, sold the 150,000 square meter plot of land to Corral for four million pesos, according to the data recorded in the Public Property Registry; however, the former governor’s friend revealed that it was not actually a purchase-sale transaction, even though it was officially recorded as such, but rather a loan for the property that would be offered as collateral later, so that it would be seized and his house in El Campanario would no longer be legally affected.
Thus, the land that Corral took as his own was seized in exchange for his home, from 2009 until 2021, when the seizure annotation was officially lifted, according to the property’s registry history.
Government Contracts, Despite Personal Litigation
When Corral Jurado became governor of the state in 2016, he sought out various media outlets for his advertising campaigns. Thus, in 2017, a few months after taking office as governor, Corral Jurado’s administration signed a first contract with Televisa, which El Diario documented at the time.
“According to a copy of the document signed by the coordinator of Social Communication, Antonio Pinedo Cornejo, it is a Contract for the Provision of Advertising Services, which establishes a monthly payment schedule for one million pesos plus VAT, starting on February 15 of this year,” the newspaper reported. “Pinedo Cornejo confirmed the signing of the document, but reiterated on several occasions that it is not an official contract.”
The signed contract, available in the expenditure reports of Social Communication and the State Treasury, is SH/ADE/023/2017, for a maximum amount of 17.4 million pesos. It is signed by the Director of Administration at that time, Guillermo Luján Peña, a member of the PAN, and by Pinedo, on behalf of the Government; and by Eugenio Zambrano Ruiz, on behalf of the television station.
Pinedo Cornejo was the first Communications Coordinator of Javier Corral’s government, from October 2016 to December 2018 – currently under trial for two accusations, embezzlement of nearly 10 million pesos and illegal use of powers, for irregular awarding of contracts with a company with which he himself was related, as well as for collecting a bonus after his resignation.
At the time when El Diario published the first contract of Corral’s administration with the television station, Pinedo Cornejo assured that said commercial agreement on which the State Government and Televisa were working had been authorized by the president.
On March 14, 2018, another contract was signed, identified with the code SH/ADE/012/2018, for an amount of 23.2 million pesos. It appears to have been signed by the same people as the first one.
The following year, on April 25, a third contract (SH/ADE/019/2019), now for 26.6 million pesos, was signed by the same representative of the television station, while the state side was represented by the Undersecretary of Administration, Elías Humberto Pérez (now deceased) and María José Valles Medina, second spokesperson for Corral’s five-year term.
Another contract from 2020 (SH/ADE/065/2020), signed on July 1, for an amount of 11.6 million pesos, appears on the state spending consultation platform; the signatories are, on behalf of the company, Jorge Rodríguez Berlanga, and on behalf of the State, the then new Undersecretary of Administration, Rodofo Noble San Román, and the also new Communication Coordinator, Manuel del Castillo Escalante.
The last contract between the State Government and Televisa, during the corralista administration, is dated April 9, 2021, identified as SH/ADE/021/2021. It was a maximum amount of 8.7 million pesos, a lower amount than the previous ones because the period of its administration ended in October, also signed by the state and company representatives from the previous year.
Thus, the sum of all the contracts in their maximum amounts is 87.5 million pesos during the five-year period, in favor of the television company that for years was also publicly disqualified by the now ex-PAN member.
After 87.5 million pesos… the embargo disappeared in 2021
Without Televisa or the then governor revealing how or when the debt claimed by the company was paid, the State Public Property Registry officially cancelled the embargo on the 15-hectare property in the Nombre de Dios ejido.
Following litigation over the debt claimed by the television station, the embargo was lifted for “satisfaction of benefits” on March 4, 2021, according to the history of file 2260/17 of the First Civil Court for the Morelos Judicial District of the State of Chihuahua.
On April 5 of that year, Judge María Teresa García Mata sent a letter to the Directorate of the Public Registry of Property and Notaries of the State of Chihuahua, to cancel the embargo on the land in question and subsequently, on May 6, 2021, the state agency published the corresponding cancellation, thus ending a dispute that lasted for 16 years and that began after Corral refused to pay for the contracted advertising, arguing that it was the coalition he represented that should bear those expenses.
Both parties chose not to reveal what the agreement was and how it was paid, but Corral Jurado’s relationship with the television station was resumed when he became governor and hired the company for advertising services.
There was no public information about the agreement or the end of the litigation until May, when Corral was questioned and responded that it was the best news he had received that year.
Currently, the land with the cadastral code 08-001-019-000001-966-011-00039-00-0000, in the name of the former governor, appears in the Municipal Treasury registry with a Property Tax debt of 52 thousand 684 pesos.
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