Mexico Probes Pena Nieto for Possible Use of Illicit Funds
(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s federal prosecutors are investigating former President Enrique Pena Nieto for the use of potentially illicit funds, the first known case against an ex-leader by an administration that pledged for years to crack down on graft at the highest levels of government.
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Pena Nieto, who served from 2012 to 2018 for the now opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, received transfers to Spain from Mexico for 26 million pesos ($1.26 million) as recently as last year, triggering Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit to open its case, director Pablo Gomez said Thursday. A representative of the former president didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pena Nieto responded on his Twitter account, saying he would defend the legality of his finances to the authorities. “I express confidence in the institutions that prosecute and administer justice,” he wrote.
The investigation follows a public consultation backed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador last year on whether to seek trials against former presidents and comes as the leader’s other high-profile graft case has shown little progress. Legal proceedings against a former Pemex chief, Emilio Lozoya, and over a dozen politicians accused of paying or receiving bribes have yet to lead to any convictions more than two years after Lozoya was jailed.
“We’re not going to chase anyone,” said Lopez Obrador at the same press briefing where Gomez revealed the investigation. “But if the Attorney General’s Office has evidence as part of its case that shows there were illegal acts, it has to be turned over to a judge.”
Gomez said that a family member of the former president sent the transfers from 2019 to 2021. His unit also flagged two companies with alleged “financial and fiscal irregularities” and whose shareholders included Pena Nieto and members of his family. One of the companies was linked to another business that received about 10.5 billion pesos, over $500 million, in government contracts from 2013-2018, according to Gomez.
The Finance Ministry’s financial intelligence unit sent its complaint to the Attorney General’s Office, which opened the investigation. The office is technically autonomous from the federal government.
(Updates to add Pena Nieto’s response to the accusations in third paragraph.)
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