A Former Mexican Governor Is Arrested, but Not by His Own Country
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Version 0 of 1. MEXICO CITY — The anticorruption police swooped in on Humberto Moreira, a former Mexican governor notorious for multiplying his state’s debt by 100 times in six years. The accusations were severe: among them, money laundering and misuse of public funds. Bail was denied. But there was an asterisk to the news that Mr. Moreira might be held accountable for how he spent the torrent of borrowed money that flowed into his state, Coahuila. He was arrested last Friday at the international airport in Madrid, not in Mexico, and it was the Spanish police who succeeded in building a case against him after Mexico’s attorney general said there was no evidence to charge him. In Mexico, the news was greeted with a mixture of approval and shame. Although diminished by disgrace, Mr. Moreira had remained untouchable, a political ally of President Enrique Peña Nieto who had helped build Mr. Peña Nieto’s 2012 candidacy. His arrest in Spain only served to underscore the weakness of Mexico’s institutions when it comes to confronting corruption among the political class. “Moreira is the prototype and synonym of corruption in Mexico,” Juan E. Pardinas, director of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, said on Tuesday. “He is also the prototype of impunity. One of the big challenges is to build a rule of law and to transform the rule of impunity so the 13th- or 14th-largest economy in the world doesn’t have to outsource to other countries the prosecution of these prototypes.” Mr. Moreira, 49, faces a hearing in Spain’s National Court on Friday before the judge in charge of the investigation, Santiago Pedraz, who is expected to decide whether to release him from jail to await trial. The timing of Mr. Moreira’s arrest came as a surprise to the Mexican government, which was still enjoying the glow cast by its successful hunt for Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug kingpin who was captured on Jan. 8. Whether intentionally or not, the Spanish National Police’s announcement of Mr. Moreira’s arrest on Twitter seemed to taunt Mr. Peña Nieto. The announcement concluded, “#missionaccomplished,” the same phrase the Mexican president had proudly used to break the news of Mr. Guzmán’s arrest. The prospect of a long trial in Spain that opens up Mr. Moreira’s finances to scrutiny could refocus public attention here on official corruption, an issue that has dogged the government since scandals in late 2014 over luxury homes that Mr. Peña Nieto’s wife and finance minister bought from a government contractor. Spanish prosecutors say that Mr. Moreira opened at least three bank accounts in Spain that received transfers of almost 200,000 euros, or $217,000, from two Mexican companies. Along with records of the transfers, the evidence against Mr. Moreira includes police wiretaps, according to court documents. At the first hearing after his arrest, Mr. Moreira said that the businesses were his and that the money had gone toward living expenses, court records show. Mr. Moreira rented an upscale property in 2013 in a suburb of Barcelona while studying for a master’s degree there. Until then, Mr. Moreira had spent his career in government. In 2005, when he became governor of Coahuila, on the Texas border, he embarked on ambitious spending programs. They were unsustainable, said Javier Garza, a journalist in Torreón, a city in Coahuila, but “they contributed to creating a network of political patronage.” Mr. Moreira left office to become the president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party early in 2011, uniting the party, known as the P.R.I., behind Mr. Peña Nieto as its presidential candidate. Coahuila borrowed most heavily in 2010, a year when more than a third of Mexico’s states elected new governors. “The next year, he was elected president of the P.R.I.,” Mr. Garza said. “He was the only candidate. He didn’t get there without support.” After the Mexican Finance Ministry reported that Coahuila’s debt had risen to $2.6 billion under Mr. Moreira’s tenure, he resigned as head of the party at the end of 2011. Although the state hid the debt until after Mr. Moreira left office and evidence emerged that documents had been falsified to show approval from the Coahuila State Congress for the loans, prosecutors cleared Mr. Moreira just before Mr. Peña Nieto took office. In Texas, though, federal prosecutors found that some of the funds had made it across the border. Two men who had each served as Mr. Moreira’s finance secretary in Coahuila were charged with money laundering and other crimes in November 2013 by the United States attorney’s office in Houston. One, Héctor Javier Villarreal Hernández, pleaded guilty the next year to money laundering. In June, the United States attorney’s office in San Antonio unsealed a plea-bargain agreement with a Coahuila businessman, Rolando González Treviño. He said that he had sold a stake in a chain of local radio stations to Mr. Moreira for $1.84 million and that the money had been wired to accounts in Texas. The plea agreement alleged that a co-conspirator, referred to as CC1, who was the governor of Coahuila had stolen “hundreds of millions” of dollars from the state. Kent A. Schaffer, Mr. Moreira’s lawyer in Houston, said this week that those allegations were false. “These are people who in large part, to extricate themselves from their own legal problems, claim to be working at the behest of the governor,” he said. The charges in Spain, he added, had come as a surprise. |