A judge postponed this Thursday for the fourth time the hearing of the former director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) from 2012 to 2016, Emilio Lozoyafor the case of corruption for the fraudulent purchase of the Agronitrogen fertilizer plant when he ran the state company.
Although the last time the judge postponed the appointment, on January 3, he warned that it would be the last time he would grant an extension, now the intermediate hearing was postponed until April 27 at the request of Lozoya’s defensewho is also the main person involved in the Odebrecht bribery scheme in Mexico.
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At the entrance to the Reclusorio Norte in Mexico City, where the former official is in pretrial detention, their lawyer Miguel Ontiveros declared that they were going to “formally request that the date and time be set for the signing of the reparation agreement in the terms indicated by the State institutions.”
Mr. Lozoya Austin’s position is that he is fully willing to guarantee 100% reparation for the damage requested by the institutions and that is precisely the statement that we are going to give as a defense,” he told the media before the appointment.
Lozoya could offer up to 10 million dollars to avoid jail
The lawyer acknowledged that the compensation could reach 10 million dollars through an alternative dispute resolution mechanism (MASC) to avoid that his client faces a prison sentence.
The last time, Lozoya offered 3.4 million dollars to repair the damage to Pemex for the fraudulent purchase of the plantbut a day later President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rejected the proposal for being “very little.”
Lozoya, arrested in Spain at the beginning of 2020 and extradited to Mexico in the middle of that year, has two cases open before the Mexican Justice, one for the overpriced purchase of the Agronitrogenados scrap plant from businessman Alonso Ancira, owner of Altos Hornos de México (AHMSA), in exchange for bribes.
And the second, for having allegedly received 10.5 million dollars in bribes from the Brazilian Odebrecht during the campaign and subsequent government of former President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).
In January, López Obrador was open to repairing the damage so that Lozoya could free his case, but he estimated that the purchase of Agronitrogenados cost the public treasury 200 million dollars, of which Ancira has already returned 100 million dollars.
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