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The wife of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Angélica Rivera, uses a luxury property in Miami, Florida owned by Grupo Pierdant, a potential government contractor.
The US$2.05 million dollar apartment is located in Key Biscayne, south of Miami Beach, according to The Guardian.
The Mexican First Lady, a former telenovela star, bought a three-bedroom unit, number 304, in 2005. She revealed its existence publicly in November 2014 in the wake of the Casa Blanca controversy. Rivera said she had lived in the Florida apartment for one year with her daughters. It is currently worth around US$3.5m.
However, she made no mention of Grupo Pierdant nor the company’s founder, Ricardo Pierdant, who has extensive business interests in Mexico and the United States.
In 2009 Pierdant bought unit 404 in Ocean Tower One through a company, Biscayne Ocean Holdings, apparently set up for that purpose.
Since then he appears to have let the first lady use the property as an addition to her other apartment, in effect allowing them to be managed as a single unit.
The properties share the same phone number. A woman who answered in Spanish, and identified herself only as María, said packages for Rivera could be sent to either property. “It’s the same,” she said.
According to The Guardian's investigation, Grupo Pierdant is reportedly in the running for government contracts to develop Mexico’s maritime ports.
When The Guardian tried to contact Peña Nieto’s office, they said no one was available to discuss the topic. The president’s office later rebuffed a second request by saying the first lady’s properties were a security matter.
