Gustavo Castillo and Cesar Arellano
Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, January 19, 2023, p. 5
The Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) perfected
last month the accusation for organized crime and operations with resources of illegal origin against the lawyer Juan Collado Mocelo, according to which the company Libertad Servicios Financieros (formerly Caja Libertad) repeatedly makes financial transfers abroad such as Spain, Andorra and other parts of Europe, without verifying the origin of said resources
.
The Federal Public Ministry seeks to obtain a sentence of more than 20 years against the former lawyer of characters such as Raúl Salinas de Gortari and the former leader of the oil union, Carlos Romero Deschamps. The new inquiries provide evidence about deposits in Andorra and that could involve political figures, FGR sources said.
The Federal Public Ministry presented on December 29 before federal judge Gustavo Aquiles Villaseñor, based in the North Prison of Mexico City, an accusation that perfect
previous arguments and evidence, related to the illegal purchase and sale of a property in the state of Quéretaro, with a value of more than 157 million pesos.
The accusation of the FGR, of which the day possesses a copy, stating that on March 25, 2015, José Antonio Vargas Hernández, through a “spurious power of attorney, which José de Jesús Alberto Cárdenas Rico had illegally and supposedly granted him, as sole administrator of the company Operadora de Inmuebles del Centro, He pretended to have sold the aforementioned property located in lot 2 (two), block CS-12, at the confluence of Avenidas Fray Luis de León and Boulevard Bernardo Quintana, currently numbered 9791, in the city of Santiago de Querétaro.
The operation was carried out in favor of Libertad Servicios Financieros, of which Collado was a partner, for 156 million pesos plus 17 million 222 thousand 400 VAT pesos and was settled with resources from said company, in order to advance in the chain of illegalities already mentioned
says the FGR.
The funds from the simulated sale of that property were transferred or they washed
through various companies set up to carry out operations with resources of illicit origin, according to the investigation.
First criminal trial against Collado
Collado was arrested on July 9, 2019 in a restaurant in the Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood on charges of organized crime and operations with resources of illicit origin.
A day later, a federal judge based in the North Prison determined to link him to the process. With that decision, the first criminal proceedings against him began.
On August 30, 2020, the FGR accused Collado of tax fraud for 36 million pesos, related to the evasion of income tax payment in 2015.
However, on September 5 of last year, a federal judge considered that the FGR had not provided sufficient evidence to charge that crime.
In January 2020, an investigation initiated by the Principality of Andorra was announced, in which its authorities, in collaboration with Mexican institutions, investigate the origin of 120 million dollars that the defendant deposited in 23 accounts of Banca Privada d’ Andorra between 2006 and 2015.
The defense declared that, of that amount transferred, 84 million dollars were profits from a chain of pawnshops founded by Collado’s father.
