The United States does not have an ongoing investigation against the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This was confirmed by John Kirby, White House spokesman for international affairs. “There is no investigation into President López Obrador,” Kirby stated bluntly in a telephone press conference this Thursday. The statements came after the publication of a report by The New York Timesbased on the investigations of the US Anti-Narcotics Agency (DEA) and the testimony of informants about the alleged delivery of millions of dollars to the Mexican president's campaign in 2018. The Joe Biden Administration insisted, on the other hand, on good harmony between the Governments of Mexico and the United States, and the breadth of collaboration between both in areas such as migration and border control.
“We continue to collaborate with Mr. López Obrador and his Administration to do everything we can with this unprecedented migration in the hemisphere. Also with the situation at the border, which continues to be an important focus of President Biden and his team,” Kirby said, in statements that were first taken up by The opinion and replicated by Morena, the ruling party in Mexico. “Once again, the smear campaign that has been launched against our president is denied,” said the political institute.
The report of The New York TimesHowever, it already announced that the allegations made by the informants and the transfers targeted by the DEA never led to a formal investigation, despite the fact that they were tracked for years. “In the end, the investigation was closed after US authorities recognized that it could provoke a diplomatic conflict with Mexico. In large part, the decision was made after the reaction of the Mexican Government when the United States arrested General Salvador Cienfuegos in 2020,” reads the publication, which argues that the White House did not want to risk the bilateral relationship with Mexico. a key ally in the fight against drug trafficking and the immigration crisis.
Kirby referred to the statements of the Department of Justice, which also deny that the US Government undertook any investigation into links between drug trafficking and the financing of the then-candidate's election campaign. The president's supporters in Mexico take the spokesperson's position as proof that the American newspaper lied, despite the fact that it is the newspaper itself that states that a formal case was never opened and that, at the time, the American authorities did not They were able to find a direct link between the president and criminal groups.
The scandal originated even before the publication of the report. In his morning press conference, López Obrador read the questionnaire that the American media sent him to collect his comments, called the authors of the report “filthy pasquín” and “professional slanderers,” and publicly exposed the phone number of the correspondent of Times in Mexico. “All of this is completely false,” said the president.
The report states that his children and close collaborators received millions of dollars from Los Zetas and Ismael May Zambada, founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, according to informants. It also states that US officials recorded transfers of people linked to the Sinaloa Cartel to intermediaries who work for the Mexican Government and that at least one of the banking operations coincided with a visit by the president to Sinaloa, in which he met Joaquín's mother. El Chapo Guzman.
The newspaper supported the work done by its journalists and condemned the president's reaction. “This is a worrying and unacceptable tactic by a world leader at a time when threats to journalists are on the rise,” he said. The New York Times, which chose to publish the investigation a couple of hours after López Obrador's press conference. The National Transparency Institute (INAI) opened an ex officio investigation against López Obrador for the disclosure of the personal data of the journalist who sent him the request for comments.
This same Thursday, Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and his Mexican counterpart, Alicia Bárcena, met at the G20 ministerial summit in Brazil. “Delighted to meet with you and the White House team to continue our excellent dialogue and bilateral agreements,” Bárcena wrote. EL PAÍS consulted with the Mexican Foreign Ministry if the topic of the report was discussed, but has not yet received a response. No press reports in Washington allude to the matter being discussed. The statement from the Mexican authorities details that they “reviewed the state of bilateral relations and exchanged points of view on various issues of the international situation.”
“The dirty war campaign against our movement is so crude that the United States Government came out for the second time to clarify that there is no investigation against the president,” commented Claudia Sheinbaum, the official presidential candidate, in reference to another investigation. journalistic, published by the portal ProPublica at the end of January, about similar accusations against López Obrador, but in his 2006 campaign. After that publication, Washington opted for a similar reaction, while the Mexican Executive described the report as a “slander.”
Marcelo Ebrard, former Secretary of Foreign Affairs and former candidate for Morena's presidential candidacy, assured that “the DEA is a headache in Mexico” and that the anti-drug agency “has endangered the bilateral relationship on many occasions” by giving credibility to the testimonies of informants. “It is revenge by the DEA for the legal obligations that have been imposed on them in Mexico,” Ebrard said, pointing to the agency as the source of the leak.
The controversy arises the same week that marks one year since the verdict in New York against Genaro García Luna, Secretary of Public Security during the Government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and found guilty of three drug trafficking crimes, one more for delinquency organized and another for giving false statements. Opposition members then complained that no documentary evidence was presented at the trial to prove his guilt, while government supporters celebrated the ruling. Now, when opponents claim that the roles have been reversed, the ruling bloc responds that this case is different because the accusations have not been proven in court. “Uff, pure strong things today,” Calderón ironically said on social networks. The leader of the National Action Party, Marko Cortés, said that López Obrador “should be impeached by the Chamber of Deputies, due to his increasingly evident links to organized crime.”
What has shaken the political table in Mexico has barely made waves in the United States. Virtually no US official, except Kirby, has spoken out. It is up in the air, however, what the consequences of the leak will be on the bilateral relationship, which already suffered turbulence after the publication of the report by ProPublica. The journalistic reports on alleged drug trafficking links with members of the current Administration, although they have not led to a formal investigation, have been taken as a banner by broad sectors of the opposition, who have positioned the hashtag “narco-president”, days before the presidential campaigns begin on March 1. But also by López Obrador himself, who has insisted that the publications are a sign that his adversaries are desperate and fighting a “dirty war.” Mexicans are called to the polls on June 2, while the elections in the United States are scheduled for November 5.
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