The Prosecutor’s Office asks to withdraw the jurisdiction of the governor of Tamaulipas for organized crime

Blow of effect on the Mexican political board. The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has requested this Tuesday the Chamber of Deputies to withdraw the jurisdiction, the parliamentary immunity, the governor of Tamaulipas, Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca, of the conservative PAN and a member of the Federalist Alliance, which brings together to opposition leaders. The information has been confirmed by Ignacio Mier, the deputy who coordinates the Morena bench, the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the lower house. The legislator, who has the key to the majority in the Congress of Deputies, received on Tuesday the request of the Public Ministry, which claims to have sufficient elements to accuse Cabeza de Vaca of the crimes of organized crime, money laundering and tax fraud equated, all these serious crimes.

The request to withdraw the jurisdiction from Cabeza de Vaca comes from the agents of the unit in charge of investigating operations with illicit or counterfeit money, which is attached to the Attorney General’s Office. The request will be ratified by the deputies at noon on Thursday, February 25. The request originated, according to versions within Morena’s parliamentary group, in a complaint filed for inexplicable enrichment of the governor, who came to power in the 2015 elections, elections where the PRI lost power in the northern state for the first time in more than 80 years.

The complaint filed led the Financial Intelligence Unit, commanded by the Government’s anti-corruption czar, Santiago Nieto, to gather information on an alleged fortune valued at 951 million pesos (46 million dollars). This group of the Ministry of Finance considers that between April and December 2019 transfers were made for 42 million pesos, two million dollars, from a shell company to bank accounts linked to Cabeza de Vaca. This company in turn received suspicious resources from the United States.

Cabeza de Vaca has rejected the accusations on Twitter. “Morena filters an alleged accusation against me,” wrote the local president. “Again the factious use of justice where there is no crime. A political onslaught is orchestrated, ”added the politician, who will wait to be notified by the authorities to establish his position. “I have never violated the law,” he added.

The governor of Tamaulipas thus adds another controversy against him. In August last year, Emilio Lozoya, the former director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), investigated for the corruption plot of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, accused him of receiving money in exchange for approving the energy reform of Enrique Peña Nieto in the Senate. Cabeza de Vaca was a senator for the PAN between September 2012 and February 2016, when he left his bench to seek the candidacy for governor. The statements of the former oil executive also involved in the system of bites his colleagues on the bench Ernesto Cordero, Francisco Domínguez, today Governor of the State of Querétaro; Jorge Luis Lavalle and Salvador Vega Casillas. The former PAN presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya was also singled out.

Cabeza de Vaca is a businessman with dual nationality who jumped into politics in 2000. Between 2005 and 2007 he was mayor of Reynosa, one of the most important cities in Tamaulipas. During the 2016 electoral campaign, the opposition media and politicians accused him of having links with the drug cartels, a point that usually comes to the fore every time the president aspires to public office. So far no authority has thoroughly investigated these complaints. It will be the López Obrador Prosecutor’s Office who must demonstrate the money laundering scheme.

Subscribe here to newsletter of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the present time of this country