The freedom of the former director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is getting closer Emilio Ricardo Lozoya Austin who, through a payment of 10.7 million dollars, would finalize a reparation agreement with the oil company, managing to get out of the North Prison in Mexico City where he has been imprisoned for just over a year and a half.
The total amount that the former official would pay is 10 million 736,351.7 dollars, according to Lozoya’s defense attorneys, Miguel Ontiveros Alonso and Alejandro Rojas Pruneda. This would settle the damage caused in the cases of the Brazilian firm Odebrecht and the Agronitrogen fertilizer plant.
“The amount of reparation for the damage was unanimously approved by the Pemex Board of Directors, with Mr. (Octavio) Romero Oropeza acting as Director General of that institution,” the litigants said in a statement.
Additionally, Pemex “already approved and presented, before the corresponding court, the final sum for compensation of the damage”, and even the millionaire sum has already been formally claimed and in writing before the Court in which the case is carried out. penalty against the former public servant.
With this, the proceedings against Lozoya Austin would be concluded, without his being sentenced for the crimes that the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) committed against him, that is, the accusation of criminal association, bribery and operations with resources of illicit origin (money laundering), it would be withdrawn by the federal Public Ministry, in accordance with the National Code of Criminal Procedures.
Article 186 of this norm establishes that “reparation agreements are those entered into between the victim or offended party and the accused that, once approved by the Public Prosecutor’s Office or the control judge and complied with in their terms, have as effect the extinction of the criminal action”.
the path that follows
In Mexico, the only one empowered to exercise criminal action is the Public Ministry, and this consists of accusing before the judges the alleged perpetrators of the commission of a crime. In practical terms, when the criminal action is extinguished, the prosecution’s accusation is withdrawn.
In the case of Emilio Lozoya, the reparation agreement is appropriate because the crimes for which he was accused are patrimonial, and would have been committed without violence.
In order for Emilio Lozoya to obtain his freedom, the reparation agreement reached with Pemex must be approved by the control judge who is handling the process of the former official. Prior to this, as it is an alternative dispute resolution mechanism contemplated in the National Code of Criminal Procedures, the judge must verify that the obligations contracted “are not clearly disproportionate.”
After this analysis, the judge in the case must order the release of Lozoya Austin’s North Prison, and the conclusion of the house arrest in which his mother is located, Gilda Margaret Austin, who is a co-defendant in the processes of his son.
The accusations to extinguish
During the last 33 months, after being extradited from Spain in the summer of 2020, Emilio Lozoya has faced two criminal proceedings in which the FGR requested a sentence of 59 years in prison, for his responsibility in the corruption plot of the construction company. Brazilian Odebrecht, and for the overpriced purchase of the Agronitrogen fertilizer plant.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the former official would have received a total of 10.5 million dollars in bribes from Odebrecht, with which he later bought a house in Ixtapa, Zihuatanejo, through his mother’s bank account, and by creating a trust in the where his wife and children were.
The same defendant admitted, in August 2020, in a complaint before the FGR, that former President Enrique Peña Nieto, and former Secretary of the Treasury Luis Videgaray Case, allegedly they would have received in 2012, through Lozoya, more than 100 million pesos from Odebrecht.
With these stuffing, a part of Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign was allegedly financed and, later, from the federal government, that money would have been delivered in bribes to various legislators so that they approved the energy reform in 2013.
Regarding the case of Agronitrogenados, Lozoya would have received – at the current exchange rate – the equivalent of 59.3 million pesos from the owner of Altos Hornos de México, Alonso Ancira, who later benefited from the sale he made to Pemex of the fertilizer plant. The FGR detailed in the accusation that, between the months of June and November 2012, Ancira transferred three million four hundred thousand dollars from Altos Hornos to a Swiss account in the name of a company owned by Emilio Lozoya, Billets Holding Limited.
These transfers would have helped the former director of Pemex to buy a house in the Miguel Hidalgo City Hall of Mexico City.
Shortly after, in 2014, already being director of the Mexican oil company, Lozoya Austin encouraged the Board of Directors of the parastatal to authorize the purchase of Agronitrogenados, a fertilizer plant located in Pajaritos, in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
Pemex acquired that complex for 655 million dollars, of which 455 million were to cover the plant’s assets, and another 200 million dollars for its rehabilitation and modernization. According to the federal Public Ministry, 60% of Agronitrogenados’ assets had to be replaced.
Due to these last facts, Emilio Lozoya Austin would have caused a loss to the public treasury of more than 400 million dollars, for the complex fertilizer manufacturer had no operations, and was actually worth about $50 million.
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surya palaces Journalist and lawyer, specialist in legal analysis and human rights. She has been a reporter, radio host and editor.
