What is next in the Pío López case?
We will have to wait for the General Legal Directorate on Electoral Crimes formally communicate the decision to keep the file open to the judge and have the judge publish the agreement, in order to know the decision and the final reasons for the dependency.
Just this Thursday, July 21, a federal judge ordered this Legal Directorate of the FEDE to report within 24 hours whether or not to prosecute the investigation file against Pio Lopez Obrador.
The foregoing, after the agent of the Public Ministry of the Federation, Héctor Sánchez Zaldívar, who is attached to the FEDE, informed the judge that he was unable to definitively resolve the case, stating that it is the General Legal Directorate in Matter of Electoral Crimes is the only one that could solve definitively the “decisions of incompetence, non-exercise of criminal action and reservation of the preliminary investigation”.
The other investigations
The process by which Pío López Obrador is being investigated arose from the fact that the August 20, 2020journalist Carlos Loret de Mola released two videos in which the president’s brother appears receiving an envelope and a paper bag, presumably with money, which would be destined for Morena.
For this video, more than 200 complaints were received against him, including those from the opposition parties (PAN and PRD) in order to investigate the alleged electoral crimes.
Along with the investigations of the FGR, the National Electoral Institute (INE) also carries out its own. This week, the PRD delivered videos, audios, photographs and the statements made by Pío in the interview, as supervening evidence to which he contributed on August 24, 2020 against him, for alleged illicit financing in electoral campaigns.
The INE has denounced that it has stopped the investigation due to obstacles in the procedures to obtain access to the investigation folder against Pío located in the FGR. Last December, the magistrates of the Superior Chamber of the Electoral Court of the Judicial Power of the Federation they ordered the prosecution to give information on the Pío López Obrador case to the INE pointing out that he cannot argue the ministerial secrecy for not giving the INE the information it requests to continue with its investigations.
The FGR filed in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) a constitutional controversy to reserve the information required by the Special Prosecutor for Electoral Crimes (FEDE) of the electoral body.
In May, Minister Yasmín Esquivel —who came to office at the proposal of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador— granted the FGR a suspension so as not to deliver information to the INE, as the Electoral Court had ordered, until the substantive controversy is resolved. .
