Elías Gerardo Valdés Cabrera, 54, honorary consul of the Daniel Ortega regime in the states of Coahuila and Nuevo León, received 130 contracts from the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) for more than 3,000 million pesos, equivalent to 162.1 million of dollars.
The revelation was made by the renowned journalist Carlos Loret de Mola in a column titled “the strange case of the millionaire Señor Valdés”, published this February 16 in the newspaper El Universal. He also referenced this story on the TV show Latinus_Uswhere he presented a journalistic investigation prepared by the reporter Tania Rosas.
The strange case of the millionaire Mr. Valdés. The honorary Consul of Nicaragua has received 130 contracts from the Mexican government that add up to more than 3 billion pesos. @El_Universal_Mx https://t.co/9onZQ4Aw5u
— Carlos Loret de Mola (@CarlosLoret) February 16, 2023
Ortega appointed Valdés on January 30, 2023 as Nicaraguan honorary consul for the Mexican state of Nuevo León, based in the city of Monterrey, but also named him in 2019 in an identical position for the state of Coahuila, based in the city of Saltillo.
Loret de Mola is a renowned journalist in Mexico and has won various journalistic awards such as the King of Spain in 2016. The investigation says that the consul, of Mexican origin, is a “low-profile businessman” who has benefited, through his company Servicios Especializados de Investigación y Custody, SA de CV (SEICSA), dedicated to surveillance and industrial espionage.
In diplomatic circles, Valdés is recognized as a lover of boxing and a patron of that sport and culture in Mexico. That interest ensured that he was born to him when he was 12 years old and he liked to “throw down glove” in his neighborhood. But it was not until later that he was able to help poor athletes to have a race, according to a video published in Youtube.
The surveillance company has contracts with the Attorney General’s Office, the Federal Electricity Commission, the Welfare Bank, the Institute to Return the Stolen to the People and the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), which are part of the twenty institutions with which it has economic agreements.
“What is an honorary Nicaraguan consul doing suddenly becoming a multimillionaire contractor of the 4T (as the López Obrador government is called)? It’s a mystery,” Loret said.
In the article, the journalist stressed that the officials who occupy these positions must be people of recognized probity, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico.
The investigation also maintains that Valdés has taken advantage of the good relations between AMLO and Ortega. “The businesses of the honorary consul have been strengthened with public resources, delivered by the Mexican Federal Government to his company SEICSA”, they insisted on the same inquiry.
partner with influence
According to official information from the Registry and Cadastral Institute of the State of Nuevo León to which he had access CONFIDENTIALthe company was incorporated on March 17, 2005. Its minimum share capital was one million Mexican pesos, that is, three thousand times less than what was earned in the contracts during AMLO’s term.
SEICSA’s founding member is Consul Valdés. The report presented by Loret reveals that the diplomat is still in the company and his partner is Víctor Manuel Torres Moreno, former head of the Intelligence Division of the Federal Police in the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto.
According to the constitutive act, the company has a variety of activities: official security services for industry, schools, hospitals, banks, houses, offices, shops, hotels and residences, but it also provides industrial espionage services, investigations, cameras of closed circuit, services of transfer and custody of people or valuables in terrestrial transportation and personal escort.
The revelations about these businesses have met with another reality questioned by journalism in the region: the silence of López Obrador in the face of human rights abuses committed in Nicaragua.
Loret de Mola described Ortega as one of AMLO’s “darlings” and recalled that the Nicaraguan dictator has been in power for the last 16 years and continued in power, after eliminating political competition in 2021, “imprisoning or exiling any opponent”.
In a interview granted to CONFIDENTIAL In November 2022, Mexican Senator Emilio Álvarez Icaza pointed out that the Mexican ruler is “submissive and ignorant” of human rights violations also in Venezuela.
“Unfortunately, Mexico, through the López Obrador government, has assumed a role of complicity with the Ortega dictatorship. Mexico has decided to close its eyes,” lamented the senator.
The first published scandals about this company were disclosed in 2020. The newspaper Power and Criticism He then assured that the Ministry of the Interior had withdrawn the permission of the company to work in the field of surveillance in 2017.
“However, in this 4T Administration it has been seen (benefited) by important contracts with the Federal Electricity Commission, the National Institute of Migration and the Mexican Institute of Social Security,” they explained.
Since then, despite the scandal that has been growing in Mexico until the recent investigation of Loret de Mola, Ortega’s silence has been overwhelming about the business activities of his honorary consul.
