Emir Olivares and Arturo Sanchez
Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, August 13, 2022, p. 5
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pointed out that irregularities have been detected in the management of the El Pinabete mine, in Sabinas, Coahuila, which suffered damage last week and in which 10 workers are still trapped.
The employees, he said, were registered with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) after the accident and are not unionized.
Yesterday morning, he said that he asked the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) -which is already investigating the facts- to act rigorously and go in depth so that there is no impunity, so it should not limit the investigations to the person in charge of the mine, but also to the concession holders, union representatives and officials who were able to endorse its operation.
Previously, in the security meeting that takes place daily in the Ignacio Zaragoza room – witnessed by reporters – the president requested a report on the owners of the mine, to which the Undersecretary of Public Security, Ricardo Mejía, put on the table three names:
Régulo Zapata Jaime, former mayor of Sabinas; Carolina Morales Iribarren, former mayor of that municipality and current Undersecretary of Labor of the Coahuila government; and her son, Régulo Zapata Morales, who have denied having any relationship with the mine.
Already during the press conference, the President indicated: In the case of this particular mine, inspections are carried out. In a very strange way, according to the report they presented to me, once the accident happened, they went to register the workers with Social Security.
besides that they are not unionized.
I consider that surely it is a clever plan to punish the one who appears by enrolling the workers in the Insurance and not the dealers. Throughout that region there has been a lot of corruption, that is what has prevailed, corruption, chieftainships, and with a lot of political influence, chieftain governors throughout the region, and also corrupt businessmen, linked to politicians
.
He was insisted on the risk that the responsibilities be limited to the person identified by the FGR as Cristian N, legal representative of the company and who is charged with the crimes of acts of direction and administration in the illegal exploitation of the subsoil, property of the nation. , through the mine.
In this regard, López Obrador stressed that the investigation cannot be closed only on that person.
–Will you also leave for the officials who would have allowed the operation? –She insisted.
–(Against) those who are responsible, there is no impunity for anyone. And it may be that they want to maneuver that way (try to have only one person in charge). The people there know very well what is going on, what is going on, who are the ones behind all these irregular affairs. All these mines that are exploited clandestinely or that have a concession, do not notify, for that reason there is no supervision by authorities. You have to investigate well, thoroughly, but now (the priority is) the rescue.
Reporting the progress of the operations to recover the 10 trapped miners, the national coordinator of Civil Protection, Laura Velázquez, reported that the rescue teams would enter during the course of Friday.
For his part, the Secretary of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, commented that the water level in the wells was 70 centimeters in one, 3.9 meters in the second and 4.7 meters in three.
