Oil workers denounce delay in investigation of Romero Deschamps

Jared Laurels

Newspaper La Jornada
Friday, January 20, 2023, p. eleven

Oil workers demonstrated yesterday before the headquarters of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to claim the institution’s lack of progress in the investigations against former union leader Carlos Romero Deschamps for an alleged diversion of millions of resources.

The retired José Vega Barragán, who filed the complaint in 2018, pointed out in an interview that it is about the rendering of accounts of a trust for 50 billion dollars and the disappearance of 207 million pesos in another.

The first, he explained, is the union patrimony that works in national and foreign accounts and that was left by the late leader Joaquín Hernández Galicia, la quina. The other was for the construction of houses (Ficolavi) for Pemex workers.

The accusation, also made by Raúl Romero Maldonado and other members of the oil union, details that the fund was reduced, since it had a balance, until December 2012, of 64 million 966 thousand 239 pesos. There is a shortage of 207 million 33 thousand 760 pesos.

Romero Maldonado added that a labor trust, established to guarantee the payment of salaries and benefits to retirees, widows and future retired workers, also disappeared.

The complaint, indicated Vega Barragán, was formulated in March 2018 before the then Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) and was recorded in folder 390/2018, which -during the transition process to the current FGR- changed to 142 /2019. In it, the 36 leaders of the sectional executive committees were also denounced.

Since then, there is delay and the FGR has been omissive, because the complaint has gone through five different public ministriesclaimed the oil tankers from different states of the country.

In the research folder too we are demanding accountability, because the oil union had a lot of property. We want to know where the union patrimony was left, which in 1989 left 50 billion dollars in a trustexposed Vega Barragan.

Separately, members of section 45 of the Hospital Central Norte, in Azcapotzalco, demonstrated against the lack of material resources and various violations of their collective agreement. They pointed out that Pemex has failed to deliver uniforms, personal protective equipment and medicines, and the electromedical and biomedical equipment is in poor condition.