Former Pemex director's denunciation is a political bomb in Mexico

Three former presidents, several former ministers, deputies, senators and governors from the two parties that have shared power in Mexico over the last 90 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN), are the protagonists of the confession of the former director of Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Emilio Lozoya.

Lozoya's denunciation is a political bomb for the Aztec country and has uncovered one of the largest networks of corruption, of bribery in the Odebrecht case, in the country.

Emilio Lozoya, a strong man in Mexican politics, was an advisor to former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) during the presidential campaign. Lozoya is so far the only one on trial in Mexico for the Odebrecht scandal. In other countries such as Brazil, he has taken people like former Brazilian President Lula Da Silva to jail.

The former director of Pemex has been accused of being involved in the case since 2019, but Lozoya was on the run for several months until he was arrested in Spain last February. He is accused of having received US$10 million from the Brazilian construction company, as well as forming a money laundering network to hide his origin.

In his defence, Lozoya's lawyers said that he was "used by a power apparatus made up of high authorities of the Mexican state". As part of a deal with the Mexican Attorney General's Office, Lozoya is on probation in exchange for information about the case.

Lozoya's 63-page complaint includes Peña Nieto, Luis Videgaray, secretary of finance with Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón (Mexican president with the PAN from 2006 to 2012) and Carlos Salinas de Gortari, former president of the PRI from 1988 to 1994.

But the revelation goes further and also points to PAN and PRI candidates who competed with Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in the 2018 elections, such as Ricardo Anaya and José Antonio Meade.

The attorney general, Alejandro Gertz, reported that Lozoya "is pointing out that there was a series of bribes for an amount exceeding 100 million pesetas (about US$4.4 million), which were mainly used for the presidential campaign". And he continued: "The person who later became president (Peña Nieto) and his secretary of finance (Luis Videgaray) are the people who ordered this money to be given to various foreign electoral advisors who collaborated and worked for the campaign," indicating that this money came from Odebrecht. 

The complaint refers to the fact that part of the money given by Odebrecht was used to ensure the approval of the Energy Reform in Congress in 2013, and that both Peña Nieto and Videgaray ordered this money to be used to bribe congressmen and senators.

In his daily press conference, the Mexican president gave full veracity to the revelation and called it "scandalous".  For his part, Felipe Calderón has accused AMLO of "illegal and mediatic handling of the case" and using it as an "instrument of revenge and political persecution.

Meanwhile, Peña Nieto, Videgaray or Salinas de Gortari have remained silent in the face of the accusations of the former president of the state oil company.