The demand of Pío López Obrador, brother of the president, against Carlos Loretbecause, he alleges, it caused him moral damage and for which demands a repair of 200 million pesos, it's not going to get anywhere. For him to succeed, he would have to convince the judge that the broadcast of two videos where he is receiving cash for political campaigns of his brother Andrés Manuel, affected his life and that the journalist acted with malice. Pío declared himself very happy at the end of the hearing, after which he told the press that he had proven his innocence. He didn't say anything else, nor was he asked what the hell he was talking about.
The proceedings were carried out due to the lawsuit that was filed in 2022 for the dissemination of the videos two years earlier. It was neither the trial, nor was it the place for him to answer about the destination of the money they gave him. He was not the accused either, but the accuser. Loret said that Pío admitted that he was the one who appeared in the videos and that he did receive the money that he published, which is only relevant for the journalist, who thereby proves that what was disseminated was true. However, that statement has great significance and enormous wings to fly, to the detriment of the president's brother.
If this country had laws, Loret and Latinus, the media for which he works, would have to be calm, because the ruling would almost automatically come out in their favor. Moral damage does not apply. For example, the complaint from the PAN and the PRI to the Electoral Crimes Prosecutor's Office did not proceed because it could not be documented that the million and a half that Pío received in a restaurant and in his house were to finance López Obrador's campaigns.
Nor was his forestry business affected, as he declared to Joaquín López Dóriga in an interview in October 2022. Furthermore, the Ministry of Territorial and Urban Development allocated 89 million pesos to renovate the stadium of the Guacamayas de Palenque baseball team. , of which Pío was founder and is a director. To his brother the president, everything did what the wind did to Juárez.
However, if this country had laws, Pío would have to go to jail along with David León, who gave him the million and a half pesos in two brown paper bags. León, who was the director of Civil Protection at the beginning of the López Obrador government, in 2015, the year in which the videos were made, was a political operator for the governor of Chiapas, Manuel Velasco, who for security reasons and to document that he handed over the money they gave him from the treasury for political purposes – even if it was something irregular and illegal -, he surreptitiously recorded the deliveries of resources, which is part of Pío's original complaint, for having “improperly” released images and information obtained through private intervention.
In the videos, León did not put a gun to Pío's head so that he could receive the money, nor was there any tension in their meetings, but quite the opposite. Pío even told him that his brother was aware of the money that Velasco sent him. It is not clear why he also included him in the lawsuit against Loret and Latinus, unless he was held responsible for the leak of the videos – from the safe in one of his offices – and their delivery to the press to harm him and his family. brother. However, as explained above, there was no moral damage.
What did happen – hence the importance of what Loret mentioned in Pío's testimony – is his recognition that he received cash of unknown origin, which could enter into the commission of a crime contemplated in Article 400 Bis of the Penal Code. , which has penalties of 5 to 15 years in prison and fines equivalent to one thousand to five thousand days of minimum wage. The alleged crime of operations with resources of illicit origin was not pursued because the corresponding complaint was never made to the Attorney General's Office, nor did it open an ex officio investigation file, which was limited to the electoral field. However, the statute of limitations for the crime is 10 years, so there is still time to proceed judicially.
It is naive to think that prosecutor Alejandro Gertz Manero will act in accordance with the law, and since the videos were released, he has sought to cover up any crime that Pío may have committed. That is what happened with an investigation carried out by the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Finance, still under the direction of Santiago Nieto, which found that he did not have any professional activity nor was he registered in the SAT, which did not prevent him from managing the baseball team and financially supporting his son, who was studying in Canada.
The UIF also discovered that his wife had income derived from agricultural and forestry activities, but she did not declare it for three years, which generated inconsistencies in the SAT, which were also not clarified. That investigation did not find transfers to Pío, who was constantly dealing with cash of suspicious origin. Despite the networks of links and the existing information about his financial movements, Nieto closed the investigation and exonerated him.
Pius's demand, however, opens several doors to hell ahead. President López Obrador, who said yesterday that the lawsuit was a waste of time because Loret, whom he defamed again, was protected by the judges, whom he insulted again, could be called to testify, as Pío considered at some point, so that he can say what destination the money he received was, which could also serve to report him in another court for the alleged crime of use of resources of illicit origin. But this will not happen either, because in this country the law is lax and discretionary.
X: @rivapa
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