More US $ 9.2 million bribes from Odebrecht in Mexico revealed

An international investigation revealed this Wednesday that the Brazilian Odebrecht gave bribes in Mexico from 2006 to 2011 for US $ 9.2 million, an additional amount to which the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) is now investigating.

The 25 illegal payments were delivered to seven officials, whose identity is secret, during the six-year terms of Vicente Fox (2006-2012) and Felipe Calderón (2012-2018), according to information obtained by Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI) and the Fifth Element Lab.

These resources are in addition to the US $ 10.5 million that it would have received Emilio Lozoya, former director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), during the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).

The documents that reveal this information correspond to the Brazilian Attorney General’s Office and to the accounting system of the Structured Operations Department, “Odebrecht’s secret office “, which distributed the bribes to officials in Latin America and Africa, the associations said.

“They also reveal that the scope of the corrupt practices was much more extensive than that originally recognized by the former directors when they confessed to having bribed Lozoya and when they later admitted illegal payments to political campaigns.”, Reported the Fifth Element Lab.

The investigation is revealed in the midst of the controversy that has caused the delay in the Lozoya case, who has been extradited for more than a year in Mexico, where there is only one detainee for the Odebrecht scandal, the former senator Jorge Luis Lavalle of the National Action Party (PAN).

The opposition has accused the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador of using the case of Lozoya, who has used the criterion of opportunity to avoid jail, to “get revenge”From his political enemies the PAN and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The new documents show that the illicit payments of Odebrecht started in Mexico in 2006, “in favor of characters involved in the construction of a hydraulic work in Michoacán”, Known as the Francisco J. Múgica dam, MCCI asserted.

“The Michoacán work referred to in the new documents was executed during the period of Lázaro Cárdenas Batel and Leonel Godoy as governors of that state, and during the six-year terms of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón”Added the organization.

The association clarified that the evidence does not mention that the former presidents “have been the recipients of an illegal payment, nor does it reveal the identity of the beneficiaries ”.

The Brazilian prosecutors sent the documents, which contain more than 250 pages of information, following a request from the Peruvian prosecutor’s office, where new lines of investigation have been opened, according to the Fifth Element Lab.

The information package includes hundreds of payment orders and illegal transactions that occurred from 2004 to 2011 in Latin American countries, such as Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Panama.

Unlike Peru, Mexico “has not been so active“To request help from Brazil and has rejected the collaboration offered by Odebrecht, the association said.

“Without a collaboration agreement signed with the Brazilian firm, it is more difficult for Mexican prosecutors to know who the beneficiaries of the bribes were”, He indicated.