Gustavo Castillo Garcia
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, May 30, 2022, p. 4
By resolution of the third Unitary Court in Criminal Matters, based in Mexico City, the investigation into the so-called White Housewhich involved former President Enrique Peña Nieto, his wife Angélica Rivera and the Higa company, concluded with sanctions against the former officials identified as responsible for the disappearance of the file containing the evidence of the illegal acts, with a punishment in which the accused must only carry out social service actions and offer a public apology for not having safeguarded the original documentation and instead left a copy of the public version with all the important data tested (crossed out or deleted).
Despite the opposition of the representatives of the Ministry of Public Administration (SFP) and the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR), who argued that the accused should be punished with a prison sentence, because the offense caused was directly resented by the SFP, and by society in general due to the type of matter under investigation, since the lost file is of national importance
Judge Isabel Cristina Porras Odriozola decided to grant them what is called an alternative solution mechanism and a conditional suspension of the criminal process.
The court’s resolution was issued in September 2021, and last Thursday, May 26, a control judge based in the North Prison fulfilled the sentence handed down by Judge Porras Odriozola.
The imparter of justice granted the benefits of the conditional suspension within the resolution issued in Criminal Toca 206/2021-NS -of which the day has a copy–, to José Gabriel Carreño Camacho, former Undersecretary for Administrative Responsibilities and Public Procurement; Jesús Antonio Suárez, former general director of complaints and investigations, and Daniel Pérez Rueda, former deputy general director of investigations B, all from the SFP, who were responsible for safeguarding the original file of the investigation carried out by the SFP in 2015 .
It resumes in 2018
According to the background of the case, in December 2018, by decision of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the then head of the SFP, Irma Eréndira Sandoval, set herself the goal of proving the corruption of Peña Nieto’s six-year term and requested the file of the scandal known as the White Housesince the agency administratively exonerated the former president and his wife, but the SFP had not filed the corresponding criminal complaint.
Information released during the initial hearings of criminal case 56/2021, built with the investigations carried out by the Specialized Prosecutor for the Fight against Corruption (Femcc), which is directed by María de la Luz Mijangos Borja, it was detected that the original file had disappeared and in its place there was a public version of the resolution, without annexes, nor the contracts that Angélica Rivera presumably signed with Televisa, nor the evidence proving the income to acquire the call White Housenor the accounting report that was supposedly prepared during Peña Nieto’s administration.
It should be mentioned that in May 2019 the SFP filed a complaint with the Femcc against whoever was responsible for the disappearance of said file.
For this reason, the Femcc could not investigate the merits of the case, that is, the acts of corruption related to the property.
The three former SFP officials were brought to trial, due to the laxity of the law to punish the crime of improper exercise of public service and that the prison sentence did not exceed five years as an arithmetic average, the control judge – who had initially refused to grant the benefits of the conditional suspension of the process–, decided, based on the resolution of the unitary court, that the defendants only carry out social service activities and offer a public apology for having disappeared the original file of the case and Leave a certified copy of the public version of the investigation carried out in the security vault of the Superior Audit Office of the Federation.
In November 2014, López Obrador indicated during a proselytizing tour of Tabasco: I am still looking for the idiot who believes that the businessman Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantú sold the Lomas de Chapultepec residence to the President, valued at 85 million pesos
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It has been pointed out that during Peña Nieto’s mandates as Governor of the State of Mexico and President of the Republic, he incurred various irregularities in the assignment of works to businessman Hinojosa Cantú, such as the expansion of the International Airport of Mexico City and the works for the Mexico-Querétaro Train, the Monterrey IV Aqueduct, the Toluca-Naucalpan highway and the remodeling of the presidential hangar.
