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A video that shows two former Senate workers linked to Mexico’s conservative party PAN receiving large amounts of cash is Mexico’s latest corruption scandal. It is believed the money was used to bribe senators to approve a series of reforms proposed by Enrique Peña Nieto.
Last week, former Pemex chief Emilio Lozoya filed a lawsuit against Enrique Peña Nieto and Luis Videgaray. According to Lozoya, they instructed him to distribute Odebrecht bribes among politicians so that they would approve a series of reforms.
A YouTube channel under the name Juan Jesús Lozoya Austin, Emilio Lozoya’s brother, released the video.
Sources said the video, which was recorded inside the Senate, was not part of the evidence Emilio Lozoya presented to the Attorney General’s Office.
The video was posted on August 16; however, it went viral on Monday, hours after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the videos recorded by Emilio Lozoya should be broadcasted on national television and shared on social media.
Recommended: Emilio Lozoya says Odebrecht bribes were used to fund Enrique Peña Nieto's presidential campaign in 2012
The video released on Sunday shows PAN member Guillermo Gutiérrez Badillo and Rafael Caraveo , who is not a party member, distributing large amounts of cash in plastic bags, which are later placed inside a suitcase.
Gutiérrez Badillo worked at the Senate during the previous administration and was currently working as a private secretary for Quéretaro governor Francisco Domínguez Servién. However, after the video went viral, the PAN governor fired Badillo.
The Querétaro governor took to Twitter to say he was not aware of the bribes and corruption acts.
On the other hand, Rafael Caraveo worked at the Senate and collaborated with former senator Jorge Luis Lavalle Maury, who was expelled from the PAN in 2018.
In the scandalous video, Caraveo interacts with a third person whose identity is unknown and reveals this is the 18th time they deliver money to politicians.
After the video was leaked, Lozoya’s lawyer released a statement to deny Juan Jesús Lozoya posted the video to YouTube. The lawyer also confirmed Lozoya’s brother will file a lawsuit before the Attorney General’s Office.
Recommended: Emilio Lozoya exposes MXN 500 million bribery schemes plotted by Peña Nieto and Videgaray
President López Obrador reacts
This morning, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the videos recorded by Emilio Lozoya should be broadcasted on national television.
During his news conference, the President said he will seek to recover all the embezzled money. Once again, he said former president could face trials as long as people vote in a referendum.
Lozoya Austin files a lawsuit
Former Pemex chief Emilio Lozoya Austin filed a lawsuit against ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto and former Foreign Affairs Minister Luis Videgaray Caso on August 11. Lozoya argues Peña Nieto and Videgaray instructed him to distribute MXN 500 million in Odebrecht bribes to pay foreign advisers during the 2012 presidential campaign, lawmakers, and a political party.
In 2012, supporters of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused Peña Nieto’s campaign of employing about 20 foreign advisers, including some from South America, Spain, and the United States. At the time, Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party denied those people worked for his campaign.
When Peña Nieto’s ads started appearing on television in 2012, the production values and locations were far beyond the reach of López Obrador, who could barely afford microphones for the small rallies he held in town squares. Peña Nieto appeared in a series of slick 30-second ads filmed in each of Mexico’s 31 states, where the telegenic, neatly groomed candidate was shown hugging and shaking hands with people of each state.
Peña Nieto’s campaign was so carefully managed that the former soap opera star he married just before the campaign, and from whom he split just two months after leaving office, appeared to be part of the election plan.
After winning, Peña Nieto introduced a series of historical reforms favoring the private sector, including an energy reform that opened the oil sector to foreign companies.
In total, Lozoya Austin argues he paid MXN 404 million in bribes to lawmakers and a political party to approve a series of structural reforms proposed by Enrique Peña Nieto.
Peña Nieto proposed reforms regarding labor, economic competitiveness, telecommunications, finance, elections, education, social security, energy, transparency, and justice between 2012 and 2014.
The reforms were the basis of the so-called Pact for Mexico, a political-legislative agreement supported by the PRI, PAN, and PRD.
They later told him to give lawmakers another MXN 84 million. Lozoya argues he gave a party leader over MXN 200 million.
The former Pemex chief said Felipe Calderón Hinojosa granted Odebrecht a government contract to build a petrochemical plant, Etileno XXI, in Veracruz.
Before judges bound Emilio Lozoya over for trial in connection with the Odebrecht and Agronitrogenados cases, it was rumored that the lawmakers involved in the bribery scheme were Ernesto Cordero, Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, José Luis Lavalle Maury, and Salvador Vega Casillas.
Hours later, Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero said the bribes allegedly ordered by Enrique Peña Nieto and Luis Videgaray caused economic damages worth MXN 400 million.
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