In case Lozoya goes to trial, the process must be against Peña, says lawyer

Cesar Arellano and Arturo Cano

Newspaper La Jornada
Friday February 17, 2023, p. eleven

The hearing of the former director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Emilio Lozoya, for the Agronitrogenados case – a plant acquired with an overprice of 200 million dollars – was deferred for the fourth time.

Judge Gerardo Alarcón set April 27 as the new date following the defense request, based on the fact that the Attorney General of the Republic delivered new evidence (approximately four thousand pages) just last February 14.

Leaving the hearing, held in the courts attached to the North Prison in Mexico City, lawyer Miguel Ontiveros assured that, if the former director of Pemex comes to trial in the Odebrecht or Agronitrogenados cases, the process should be against the former president Enrique Pena Nieto.

The trial will be against Peña Nieto and his collaborators, who directed the organized power apparatus. There can be no trial against Emilio Lozoya because he is a collaborating witness who has provided sufficient elements on the basis of which criminal action has already been brought by of the prosecution and has even generated arrest warrants and people prosecuted.

He reiterated that the trial should be against the former president of Mexico and, if necessary, I want to make it very clear, if it is necessary that we request that a note of collaboration be sent to the Spanish institutions, especially to the government prosecutor’s office of the Kingdom of Spain so that Enrique Peña Nieto, former president of Mexico, can be summoned to the prosecutor’s office and the complaint that exists against you is made known to you and that you state what is convenient for you.

Likewise, he explained that just a couple of days ago “they handed us some 4,000 pages linked to some translations – JP Morgan account statements, it was said at the hearing – and to some opinions” and for this reason the defense requested a deferral to be able to access to that information.”

The judge agreed with the defense and set April 27 as the new date to continue the process and noted that the hearing can be postponed any number of times, it can be 100, that doesn’t matter to meas long as there is an adequate defense of the accused.

Regardless of the new date, Ontiveros explained, they have asked the representatives of Pemex, the FGR and the FIU to hold prior meetings in order to generate the conditions so that on March 10 – the day set for the hearing in the Odebrecht case – Let’s come and sign the agreements for the Agronitrogenados case and the agreement within the framework of the criterion of opportunity, and suspend both processes.

Ontiveros took advantage of the large presence of reporters to send a message from Emilio Lozoya to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which he summarized in four points: 1) Lozoya says that he resigned from the extradition trial in Spain fully trusting the President, the prosecutors and the new anti-corruption positions generated by the Fourth Transformation; 2) that he requested a criterion of opportunity and a reparation agreement from the attorney general to resolve both cases, and in this area he denounced a series of authorities from the previous six-year term, beginning with the former president of the Republic Enrique Peña Nieto and the entire organized apparatus of corrupting power implemented in the past six-year term.

In the third point of the message from someone who was a member of Enrique Pena Nieto’s first circle, Lozoya said that despite being unjustly deprived of his freedom has continued to collaborate and trust fully in State institutionsalthough does not understand why despite having the condition of collaborating witness is imprisoned, repressed, while the people who have been denounced are free.

Lastly, Lozoya ratifies his commitment to proceed with the signing of the agreement, to extinguish the criminal actions against his family, especially his mother, who has been in house arrest for just over a thousand days.

Very early, when entering the area of ​​federal courts, the lawyer Ontiveros was questioned about the amount that Lozoya will pay as damage repair.

More than 10 million dollars?they asked him, to which he replied dismissively: Well, of course it exceeds that amount.

He added that Lozoya has full disposition to guarantee one hundred percent the reparation of the damage requested by the institutions.

In the postponed hearing, it was expected to define if Pemex accepted the 3.4 million dollars that Lozoya offers as repair in the case of Agronitrogenates.