The Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) failed in the criminal proceedings against the former director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Emilio Lozoya, who was acquitted by Judge Genaro Gerardo Alarcón López in the case of the Agronitrogen fertilizer plant, for what the federal government will no longer receive the 30 million dollars that it intended to obtain from the former official.
Considering that the damage caused to Pemex by the overpriced acquisition of the company owned by Alonso Ancira has already been paid, Judge Alarcón López decided to suspend the procedure that was followed against Lozoya, which has the effect of the complete disappearance of the charges that in this case weighed against the former head of the Mexican oil company.
Although this sentence would allow Emilio Ricardo Lozoya Austin to be released, who has been in preventive detention since November 2021, the former director of Pemex must remain in the North Prison of Mexico City, since the process of the corruption plot of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
In this last case, Lozoya is accused of allegedly having received a total of 10.5 million dollars in bribes, with which he later bought a house in Ixtapa, Zihuatanejo, through his mother’s bank account, and through the creation of a trust. where his wife and children were.
Setback against FGR
The acquittal of Emilio Lozoya, 48, was announced Thursday night by Judge Genaro Gerardo Alarcón López, applying a recent isolated thesis of the First Collegiate Court of Querétaro, a criterion that indicates that the reparation agreements reached in the same case benefit to all the defendants in said process.
Because Alonso Ancira, former owner of Agronitrogenados, reached an agreement of these characteristics in November 2021, with which he promised to pay Pemex a total of 216.6 million dollars, the judge determined that the damage suffered by the parastatal was already paid, thus eliminating the responsibility of Lozoya Austin.
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Thus, the togado closed the case against Emilio Lozoya, leaving the FGR and Pemex without the 30 million dollars that he had requested from the former official last July.
Today the judge in the case made a fair decision, in accordance with human rights, a democratic justice system like the one we have and considered that he proceeded to suspend the process, just as it had already been suspended in the case of the co-defendant” Alonso Ancira, Miguel Ontiveros Alonso, Lozoya’s defender, told the press.
This is a severe setback for the Prosecutor’s Office because -initially- the former director of Pemex was willing to pay, as reparation for the damage, 10.7 million dollars. However, on July 18, the federal Public Ministry changed its mind and demanded $30 million from Lozoya.
On that occasion, Lozoya Austin’s defense and the defendant himself considered that the million-dollar figure constituted extortion on the part of the FGR, for which they refused to pay it.
The Agronitrogenados corruption case consisted of the overpriced purchase of that fertilizer plant, carried out by Pemex when Lozoya was its director. In that operation, the parastatal paid 655 million dollars, but in reality the complex was worth around 50 million dollars.
For these facts, Emilio Lozoya was accused of criminal association, bribery and operations with resources of illicit origin (money laundering), since he would have received a bribe of 3.4 million dollars from Alonso Ancira, in order for the parastatal to buy Agronitrogenados .
According to the FGR, with that money the former official bought a residence located in the Lomas de Bezares subdivision, in the Miguel Hidalgo City Hall of Mexico City, a property that is valued at more than three million dollars.
The Odebrecht case is missing
With this acquittal, only the case of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht remains to be resolved, a firm that would have bribed Lozoya in order to subsequently receive various contracts from Pemex.
In this regard, the same former director of the oil company admitted, in August 2020, in a complaint before the FGR, that former President Enrique Peña Nieto, and former Secretary of the Treasury Luis Videgaray Caso, allegedly had been the recipients of the bribes delivered in 2012. by the Brazilian company, which would have totaled 10.5 million dollars (about 180 million pesos at current exchange rates).
With these stuffs, a part of the presidential campaign of Peña Nieto was financed, who, already being head of the federal Executive Power, would have delivered a part of that money, through Lozoya Austin, to various legislators so that they approved the energy reform in 2013.
In this case, the Public Ministry has requested a 39-year sentence for Emilio Lozoya, although he still intends to negotiate a reparation agreement with the FGR that would allow him to be released.
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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.