Lozoya insists that he distributed the bribery money; Request a free ride

From the North Prison, where he has already spent six months in prison, the former director of Petróleos Mexicanos, Emilio Luzoya AustinHe declared again that over the past six-year period he had distributed bribes to get approval for an energy reform, but he insisted on denying that he held the peso. Without providing new evidence, he reiterated that former secretary Luis Videgaray and former president Enrique Peña Nieto were responsible for everything, as was former deputy Ricardo Anaya, who “loved money.”

This is the fifth statement Lozoya has made to the FGR of these events, although it is the first time he has done so while in prison. In a three-page certificate political animal He has a copy, the former official admits that he took money from various sources to pay the alleged bribes, and says that he lived through “threats, pressure and extortion.”

The new testimony is part of negotiations with Lozoya’s attorney They want to be released. They claim that in exchange for these statements and the delivery of several million dollars, Pemex, the Financial Intelligence Unit and the FGR Cease the proceedings against him in the Odebrecht and Agronitrogenados . cases. Although the judge He had asked for a decision in the last week of AprilThe conversation is delayed.

The statement of the former Pemex director was recorded in the investigation file FED/SEIDF/CGI-CDMX/0000865/2020, which was opened by the FGR to investigate alleged bribery to approve the energy reform. For this investigation, former Senator Jorge Luis Laval is under preventive detention and criminal proceedings have been taken against Anaya, the former presidential candidate and former leader of the PAN.

In this testimony, as has already been done in a previous one, Lozoya amends the original where he notes that bribes were paid to repair the energy, with money from the construction company Odebrecht, and now indicates that the money was taken from various sides, including the Pemex budget. He says he did it because he had no other choice.

“All the time I was under a lot of pressure. On the one hand, Luis Videgaray Caso told me it was a direct directive from the President, Enrique Peña Nieto, to do everything necessary to embody energy reform and secondary laws, while on the other hand, legislators, as about Ricardo Anaya Curtis, they asked me for more money with threats like the ones I already mentioned,” Luzoya says.

The former official asserts, without introducing any new item, that Videgaray gave Anaya money “from the budget”. In another part of the testimony, he confirmed that Peña Nieto had told him that the PAN member had been provided with resources via “moches in the Chamber of Deputies”, but that it was also necessary to give him money directly from Pemex resources.

According to Lozoya, both ex-president Peña and ex-treasury minister were clear that Anaya should be given separate resources not only because he “loved money”, but also “because he was dealing terribly” with other senators of the PAN party, and therefore, he was not It has to be persuaded separately.

“I was pressured, blackmailed and accused of corruption, and it was they who agreed to it, who benefited from them and worked… I did not find any economic benefit from these movements because the ultimate beneficiaries are the people I referred to. From the beginning,” he points out.

Throughout this statement, the former Pemex director did not mention that the resources given to Anaya came from Odebrecht, nor did he do so in testimony he gave last year. However, previously and Up to four times, Lozoya confirmed that the money from the bribes came from that Brazilian construction company.

In fact, at the time, the FGR tried to proceed criminally against Videgaray, accusing him of treason assuming that foreign money (from the construction company) had been used to promote approval of a structural reform supposedly harmful to the country. But the judge who handled the case refused to issue an arrest warrant on these facts after deeming he lacked support.

Last January, the FGR filed a formal indictment against Lozoya in connection with its 2017 investigation into the Odebrecht case, in which Indicates that he took advantage of bribes paid by the Brazilian company. However, in parallel, the same prosecution insisted on opening a parallel investigation based on Lozoya’s complaints.

complex negotiations

On April 11, Lozoya’s lawyers and representatives for Pemex, FIU and FGR requested a federal judge’s hearing to propose a possible agreement that would allow the former federal official to regain his freedom, after paying just over 200 million pesos. But after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared that what Lozoya had offered did not sound like much, the agreement was suspended.

Originally, the parties promised the judge that in the week of April 22-26 they would announce the outcome of the negotiations, but that period ended without an agreement being reached. According to the ministerial authorities, it was the lawyers from Pemex and those from Lozoya who could not match.

What Lozoya is seeking through his defenders is the suspension of the two criminal cases initiated against him for the bribes he received, according to the prosecution, from Altos Hornos de México and Odebrecht. In the case of Altos Hornos, it intends to conclude a compensation agreement through the delivery of economic resources, such as The owner of that company, Alonso Ansera, has already done so..

Meanwhile, in the case of Odebrecht, what the former official is looking for is a measure of opportunity. This is a legal benefit for those criminals who cooperate by providing information on crimes more serious or complex than those in which they participated. The effect will be a temporary suspension of the process while the information he indicated is validated to explain these crimes.

The FGR has already stated that it will agree to grant said opportunity criterion, as long as the tort repair requirement, as set out in the National Code of Criminal Procedure, is met. Pemex and the Financial Intelligence Unit must guarantee the said compensation amount.

Some professionals and civic organizations such as Tugel have publicly expressed their disapproval of a possible agreement being awarded. They consider it unacceptable, given that these are facts related to a serious corruption plot.