Journalist Carmen Aristegui is among those allegedly targeted by the government.
BBC
Several prominent journalists and activists in Mexico have filed a complaint accusing the government of spying on them by hacking their phones.
The accusation follows a report in the New York Times that says they were targeted with spyware meant to be used against criminals and terrorists.
The newspaper says messages examined by forensic analysts show the software was used against government critics.
A Mexican government spokesman “categorically” denied the allegations.
The report says that the software, known as Pegasus, was sold to Mexican federal agencies by Israeli company NSO Group on the condition that it only be used to investigate criminals and terrorists.
The Conversation – Mexico has struggled with corruption for a long, long time, but recent events indicate that the situation is now at a truly intolerable pitch. This spring, two fugitive state governors were arrested in a joint operation by Interpol and the Mexican police.
CNSNews – Corrupt state auditors and a federal government unwilling to tackle widespread corruption paved the way for the alleged embezzlement of more than $13 billion by former and current governors in Mexico, academic and civic researchers say.
Impunity is more public than ever, pushing Mexicans to a boiling point.
By Elisabeth Malkin / New York Times
When the authorities caught up with him at a lakeside hotel in Guatemala this past weekend, Javier Duarte, a fugitive former Mexican governor, went quietly.
Less than a week earlier, the Italian police had surrounded another former Mexican state governor, Tomás Yárrington, as he finished dinner at a restaurant on a Florentine piazza, ending his five years on the run.
At least three other former Mexican state governors are missing, and more than a half-dozen are under investigation or fighting prosecution on corruption charges. Whatever the accusations, the governors in this rogues gallery share at least one trait: All behaved as if they were untouchable.
“The decades of impunity have generated a level of audacity and absurdity that we have never seen in Mexico,” said Max Kaiser, an anticorruption expert at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a research organization.
Reuters – Mexico is investigating possible antitrust violations by intermediaries in auctions of the country’s public debt market, the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece) said, without naming any institutions in the probe.
Ex-Veracruz Gov. Javier Duarte was captured at a Guatemalan seaside resort.
By Jude Webber / Financial Times
President Enrique Peña Nieto hailed the arrests of two fugitive former governors from Mexico’s ruling party within a week as a “convincing message” about the state’s commitment to fight corruption, which is often seen as a bigger problem for the country than Donald Trump’s threatened renegotiation of Nafta.
The detention of Javier Duarte, who is accused of bankrupting the southern state of Veracruz before absconding last year, and of Tomás Yarrington of the northern state of Nuevo León, who enjoyed state-assigned bodyguards for part of his five years on the run from money-laundering and drugs charges, are undeniable advances, analysts say.
But the number of other former senior officials still wanted, and the slow progress in arming a new anti-corruption system with a prosecutor to lead the fight against the country’s endemic graft, suggest a lack of political will to match the rhetoric, critics say.
The timing of Mexico’s arrests — ahead of a key gubernatorial election in the State of Mexico in June that the ruling Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) must win to remain afloat in the July 2018 presidential polls — looks expedient in a country where a corruption scandal over the president’s wife’s house decimated his popularity.
“The evidence that they are really moving forward and determined to attack the problems at the root is just not there,” says Juan Francisco Torres Landa, who heads Mexico United Against Crime, a non-governmental organisation.
The sudden disappearance of Veracruz governor Javier Duarte, leaving behind nearly empty state coffers, shows how the dispersal of political authority to the states made them vulnerable to graf.
By Jose de Cordoba and Juan Montes /Wall Street Journal
One day last October, the governor of Veracruz state was scheduled to appear on a morning news program. He never showed up.
Instead, Javier Duarte disappeared, the same day authorities asked a judge for a warrant to arrest him. Many in Mexico think he was tipped off.
Duarte has since been charged with racketeering and using illegally obtained funds. Investigators believe he used front men and a web of phantom companies to divert public funds and acquire real estate in Mexico, Houston and Miami. With Veracruz state’s affairs in disarray, federal and state auditors said $2.5 billion spent by his administration was unaccounted for.
Duarte, who before vanishing denied wrongdoing in a series of media interviews, has become the public face of corruption in Mexico and an embarrassment to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Its hopes for retaining power in elections next year are hampered by the alleged financial malfeasance not just of Duarte but of half a dozen other former state governors.
On Sunday, the acting governor who filled in after Duarte’s disappearance was detained and accused of helping him flee.
The mystery of Duarte’s disappearance has riveted Mexicans’ attention even with the strong news focus this year on issues that could affect their lives and economy: the trade and border policies of U.S. President Donald Trump. Long after those controversies have receded, many in Mexico say, their country will still need to get a handle on its deep-seated corruption problem if it is to become a fully modern country. Prince-like state governors often answerable to no one pose a continuing threat to Mexico’s economic health and struggle to establish universal rule of law, political analysts say.
RT – The Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva must pay over $520 million following corruption charges made by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). The company breached the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by bribing officials in Russia, Ukraine and Mexico.
An aerial view of the aluminum around Aluminicaste Fundición de México’s San José Iturbide plant before the stockpile was shipped to Vietnam.
By Scott Patterson, Biman Mukherji and Vu Tron Khanh / Wall Street Journal
One of the world’s largest aluminum stockpiles, which until a few months ago was stored under hay and plastic tarp in a Mexican desert, has been moved to a remote port in southern Vietnam.
Starting early this year, 500,000 metric tons of aluminum has been trucked out of the Mexican city of San José Iturbide and shipped to Vietnam, according to shipping records and people familiar with the matter.
Much of it now sits under black tarps, guarded by baton-wielding men on motorcycles, at a factory and waterfront complex in the South China Sea port of Vung Tau, about a two-hour drive south of Ho Chi Minh City.
The unusually large shipments have captivated traders and aluminum-industry experts and sparked worries about what it means for global markets and aluminum prices. According to Global Trade Information Services, which tracks world-wide trade, Vietnam was the destination of 91% of Mexico’s aluminum-extrusion exports this year—a rarely used trade route for aluminum in recent years.
The Mexican stockpile, now in Vietnam, had been traced to one of China’s richest men, Liu Zhongtian, chairman of aluminum giant China Zhongwang Holdings.
American aluminum executives accused Mr. Liu of sending his metal to Mexico to disguise its Chinese origins and evade American tariffs—a charge. Liu and China Zhongwang denied.
AP – Mexico’s government has found about 421 million pesos ($20.5 million) linked to the former governor of the Gulf coast state of Veracruz who is sought in a corruption case. The Attorney General’s Office said two businesses that apparently received state funds from people representing ex-Gov. Javier Duarte through “illegal operations” have agreed to return the money.
The Guardian-So well-entrenched is corruption in Mexico’s political life, that an entire lexicon has evolved to describe its intricacies. Now a group of activists has published a compendium of corruption terms in an effort to highlight the country’s graft problem.
NYT – A senior Mexican official says prosecutors are trying to detain the former governor of Veracruz state on suspicion of corruption. Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told Radio Formula on Wednesday that officials aren’t sure where Duarte is, but believe he’s still in the country. Duarte stepped down as governor a week ago, saying he wanted to confront the corruption allegations, which he denies.
Quartz – Mexico can boast having one of the world’s best right-to-information laws. But that means little in practice, journalists and activists say, because authorities regularly skirt the spirit of the well-regarded law—starting, it is alleged, with the government agency charged with upholding it.
AP – Mexico’s National Immigration Institute says it has fired three agents for allegedly shaking down Cuban migrants for bribes, the latest alleged corruption scheme at the agency. The agency said it has fired about 2,500 agents and other employees since 2013 for malfeasance or failing vetting and background checks.
Veracruz governor Javier Duarte (R) attends the XXXVIII Session of the National Council of Public Security at the National Palace in Mexico City, Aug. 21, 2015.
Reuters
Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, voted on Monday to suspend a controversial governor’s party membership in a bid to root out widespread perceptions of corruption among its ranks.
Citing damage to the party’s image and the strength of corruption allegations leveled against Veracruz state Governor Javier Duarte, the PRI’s seven-member justice commission approved the suspension of him and to six of his aides.
Duarte became the governor of the eastern state, a populous and oil-rich PRI bastion, in 2010 a vote tarred with accusations of electoral fraud.
His time in office became synonymous with widespread drug violence, accusations of graft and multiple journalist killings.
Veracruz is the most dangerous state for journalists in Mexico, with at least 17 journalists murdered there since 2010, Reporters Without Borders says.
BBC – Two years have passed since 43 students went missing on their way to a protest in the Mexican town of Iguala. The violence that night also left three dead and two injured. At the time, their disappearance caused outrage. The anger is still burning at the Raul Isidros Burgos rural teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa, where the trainee teachers were studying.
President Enrique Peña Nietoduring Mexico’s Independence Day parade last week in Mexico City. A crackdown he ordered a decade ago when he was governor of Mexico State is under scrutiny. (Mario Guzman/European Pressphoto Agency)
By Azam Ahmed / New York Times
International human rights officials are demanding an investigation into the brutal sexual assaults of 11 Mexican women during protests a decade ago — an inquiry that would take aim at President Enrique Peña Nieto, who was the governor in charge at the time of the attacks.
The demand is part of a multiyear examination by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights into abuses during a 2006 crackdown ordered by Peña Nieto on San Salvador Atenco, a town in Mexico State where demonstrators had taken over the central square. During the operations, which left two dead, more than 40 women were violently detained by the police, packed onto buses and sent to jail several hours away.
The case was brought by 11 women to the international commission, which found that the police tortured them sexually. The women — a mix of merchants, students and activists — were raped, beaten, penetrated with metal objects, robbed and humiliated, made to sing aloud to entertain the police. One was forced to perform oral sex on multiple officers. After the women were imprisoned, days passed before they were given proper medical examinations, the commission found.
“I have not overcome it, not even a little,” said one of the women, Maria Patricia Romero Hernández, weeping. “It is something that haunts me and you don’t survive. It stays with you.”
Reuters – The financial affairs of hundreds of Mexicans mentioned in a cache of documents dubbed the “Bahamas Leaks” will be checked for tax violations, the Tax Authority of Mexico (SAT) said.
Sentido Comun – A new investigative report, called Bahamas Leaks, revealed that hundreds of companies, entrepreneurs and Mexican politicians have created financial structures or have investments in Bahamas, one of the best known tax havens in the world.
BBC – The head of Mexico’s criminal investigation agency, charged with looking into the disappearance of 43 college students, has resigned. The families of the students, who have not been seen since September 2014, had demanded that Tomas Zeron resign. No reason was given for him standing down on Wednesday.
