Juan Collado, known as the lawyer of power in Mexico, has raised his finger to point. In jail preventively since July 2019, Collado has targeted the former legal adviser to the Presidency, Julio Scherer, and four lawyers from his environment for extortion, influence peddling, criminal association and money laundering. According to the complaint, released by Political Animal and Reform, the lawyers who defended him presumed to have a close link to the then official and asked him for up to 2,000 million pesos – about 97.8 million dollars – to process his release from prison. Some members of the office that defended him faced a hearing on Monday for this cause, but it was postponed until March 8. The former advisor to the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has denied the accusations on Twitter.
Collado was imprisoned more than two years ago on charges of money laundering and organized crime. Until then he had represented the powerful of the country, including former president Enrique Peña Nieto, in his divorce, and Raúl Salinas de Gortari, brother of the former president. The complaint against the former counselor now describes a modus operandi supposedly articulated from power: a series of lawyers close to the judicial adviser of the Presidency offered benefits in exchange for money, guaranteed in some way for being in collusion with the official.
According to the media that released the news over the weekend, the document indicates that through the lawyers who defended Collado, including Juan Antonio Araujo, who admitted having worked with Scherer in the past, he was told that the only way he could get out of jail would be by selling them a company he owns, Caja Libertad, at a price well below the real price. In addition to Araujo, the lawyers César Omar González Hernández, Isaac Pérez Rodríguez and David Gómez Arnau are linked to the case.
The accusation, presented to the Prosecutor’s Office last October, adds that Collado gave them 10 million pesos to stop an investigation against him carried out by the Financial Intelligence Unit. In addition, he claims to have paid them 1.3 million dollars to leave the prison and to have agreed on a final payment of 2,000 million pesos in the form of a reparation agreement, a modality that has been seen in the great judicial cases of this six-year term, such as that of king of steel, Alonso Ancira, defended by the same office and who was released from prison after paying 216 million dollars.
In response to what was reported, Scherer denied the accusations on Twitter and said that they were “bad faith inferences”, although he admitted having met with Collado’s children. “In effect, I received the children of Mr. Collado at their express request,” he published. “I turned the matter over to the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, as it falls under its jurisdiction. I do not personally know Mr. Collado, nor am I aware of his conversations with his lawyers”, he defended himself.
Araujo Riva Palacio —who also rejected the accusations—, González Hernández, Pérez Rodríguez and Gómez Arnau faced this Monday the accusations of the Prosecutor’s Office for this complaint in a hearing where Juan Collado was present, as confirmed by his lawyer. When consulted on the subject, the president denied that Scherer’s departure from the government last September was related to this complaint and said he agreed with the allegations being investigated. “If there is this complaint, then the Prosecutor’s Office itself should investigate whether the man was, as he says, bribed or threatened,” said López Obrador.
Collado had sent a letter to the president in December 2020 requesting that Scherer be the intermediary to negotiate a reparation agreement. “We have great faith that Mr. Julio Scherer Ibarra can be the channel, if you give your consent, to find an alternate legal form to solve the various processes that I have against me,” said the letter, published by the newspaper Reform. “I wish to express my commitment to go to restorative criminal justice and begin the conclusion of reparation agreements to conclude my files satisfactorily within the framework of the law,” he added.
The former legal adviser and his entourage face other accusations that relate the same modus operandi. The lawyer Paulo Díez Gargari, for example, denounced them in early February for criminal association, illicit exercise of public service and influence peddling. The accusation was against Scherer for having created a network of public officials, lawyers and financial advisers who offered “improper benefits”. Among those who benefited from this network, says Díez Gargari, is Aléatica, formerly OHL, a Spanish company known for its long history of accusing corruption in Mexico.
Collado, for his part, remains in prison without sentence. He was arrested in a restaurant in Mexico City two and a half years ago for the crimes of organized crime and operations with resources of illicit origin. Justice investigated the jurist for allegedly being part of an illicit network that would have moved tens of millions of pesos in Mexico, Spain and Andorra. This newspaper revealed last June that Collado had collected between 2009 and 2013 in bank accounts in the European Principality 45.9 million dollars from companies used by the Sinaloa Cartel to launder money. In addition, as EL PAÍS learned, both the lawyer’s sister and brother-in-law hid millions of euros in an account at Banca Privada d’Andorra.
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