Pegasus, a story of corruption?
The information on the purchase of a highly-sophisticated Israeli spyware, Pegasus , by the Office of the Mexican Attorney-General (PGR) in October 2014 – which cost 32 million American dollars and was bought from a recently created company, with no experience in the matter, under a figurehead, and that previously to this contract had no other sales – raised the alarm at the highest spheres of the Federal Government. We're told there is someone who witnessed the purchase of this spyware first-hand and could have key information on the matter. It's none other than our current Chief of the Federal Ministerial Police, Vidal Díaz-Leal Ochoa , who was at the forefront of the National Center for Planning, Analysis, and Intelligence against Organized Crime of the PGR, between October 2014 and January 2015. Mr. Vidal not only had access to use Pegasus, but he also saw the procurement process up close, since he was the Chief of Intelligence of the PGR. Perhaps now a majority of the six members of the Coordination Committee of the National Anti-Corruption System will decide the procurement of Pegasus has legal basis considering there may be alleged acts of corruption involved, and as such, agree to handle the case. It would be quite interesting to know what Mr. Vidal has to say about the purchase to alleged figureheads. This story has just begun, but is it a story of corruption?
Beltones,
Mancera
and Madero with the Galileans
The Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) movement of the Galileans is holding an important meeting next week in order to discuss the electoral process of 2018 and the coalition governments. We've heard this new movement is led by Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, who invited to the event the former national leader of the ruling National Revolutionary Party (PRI) Manilo Fabio Beltrones, former national leader of the National Action Party (PAN) Gustavo Madero, and the current Major of Mexico City, Miguel Ángel Mancera. The meeting will be held at a hotel in the City of Mexico next August 1. The next day, several issues will also be discussed with the former council member, current president of the Federal Electoral Institute, José Woldenberg, and writer Enrique Krauze.
Who outed Manuel Velasco?
The proliferation of presidential candidate nominees is a sign of a succession that will take place in 2018. For instance, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) have placed their catalog of key players, while the Green Party (PVEM) decided to break up with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and enter the competition with their modestly symbolic 5% of preference, they say, according to the polls. In a matter of hours they had already “outed” their first nominee, Senator Carlos Alberto Puente Salas , and we're told Chiapas Governor, Manuel Velasco Coello , expressed his support in favor of scientists Julia Carabias and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas as possible candidate nominees of a Green Party that would break with the PRI, only for the presidential campaign. We're still waiting news on Governor Velasco, who in ealry 2015 said he had no interest in running for president. Will he be interested now? Will someone out him?
Agreement against Human Trafficking
Today is the World Day against Trafficking in Persons, an issue that Mexico is seeking to fight. Our sources say the Secretary of the Interior , Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, is fully immersed in this issue and on Monday he will sign a collaboration agreement with the United Nations (UN) at their offices in Mexico, to fight this crime, which last week reared its ugliest head when in San Antonio, Texas, in the United States, 10 people died suffocated – seven of them, Mexicans – inside a trailer container when the vehicle was abandoned by the traffickers together with 30 people more, most of them also Mexican.
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