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Mexico: ex-governor sentenced to nine years in corruption case Mexico: 'worst governor in history' sentenced to nine years for corruption
(about 3 hours later)
The former governor of Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Veracruz has pleaded guilty to charges of organized crime and money laundering, in an anticlimactic conclusion to Mexico’s highest-profile corruption case in recent years. A former Mexican state governor has pleaded guilty to charges of criminal association and money laundering, after presiding over an administration whose thuggery and excesses outraged the public – and eventually proved too embarrassing for his political allies.Javier Duarte, 45, was accused of embezzling millions in state money, which he used to buy a string of artworks and luxury properties. During his 2010-2016 administration, the Gulf coast region of Veracruz became one of Mexico’s most dangerous, most censored and most indebted states.
Prosecutors said Javier Duarte embezzled millions in state money and used much of it to buy properties. During his administration, Duarte took a leave from the governorship of Veracruz and fled to Guatemala, where he was arrested and extradited back to Mexico in July 2017. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 58,890 pesos (£2,350). State authorities have seized properties and cash worth around $120m, but Duarte will not have to pay any damages, and could be freed in as little as three years, according to press reports.During Duarte’s term of office, Veracruz was consumed by a string of atrocities as drug cartels battled for territory amid widespread allegations of official collusion with organized crime.
Duarte took office in December 2010, and during his administration, Veracruz became one of Mexico’s most dangerous, censored and indebted states. Thousands of people disappeared; hundreds of bodies were later found buried in a series of clandestine mass graves; at least 17 journalists were murdered.
Duarte received a nine-year sentence and had 41 properties seized as part of the plea deal. As the violence escalated, Duarte appeared unmoved by the plight of victims’ families, and instead blamed reports of bloodshed on his political rivals.
But Duarte will not have to pay reparations, and could apply for parole within as little as three years. “He was the worst governor in the history of Veracruz – and we’ve had bad governors,” said Noé Zavaleta, Veracruz correspondent for the newsweekly Proceso. Zavaleta’s predecessor, Regina Martínez, was murdered in 2012. In 2015, Zavaleta attended five funerals for murdered colleagues and said that for journalists, the period was like “living with a boot on your neck”.
“In cases like these, we are never satisfied,” said federal prosecutor Felipe de Jesús Muñoz. “We have to follow what the law says.” Media workers were threatened, filmed and intimidated; at one point Duarte’s own security detail manhandled a photographer at an event to celebrate freedom of speech.
Muñoz said that after serving four and a half years – half the sentence – Duarte could apply for parole, and that he will be credited for the one and a half years he has already spent in prison. Allegations of graft dogged Duarte’s administration from the start, including revelations that the state health secretariat had given watered-down medicines to child cancer patients. An exposé by the online news organisation Animal Politico and anti-graft group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity in 2016 showed how Duarte’s close collaborators embezzled billions of pesos of government money into shell companies. Duarte’s relatively light prison sentence prompted anger in Veracruz.“Once again the justice system is mocking society,” said Zavaleta. “Behind all this money laundering and illicit enrichment are dismantled hospitals in Veracruz, unpaid scholarships, pensioners who died because they couldn’t pay for their medicines, the 3,600 disappeared persons because we lived in a state of anarchy.”
Muñoz said the value of the properties seized was “very significant” and was almost equivalent to reparation. “Duarte got off easily, without doubt,” said Luis Pérez de Acha, a lawyer in Mexico City. “In terms of prison and his wealth? Very easily.”
During his administration, 19 journalists were killed in the state, prompting press freedom organizations to describe Veracruz as the most dangerous place for journalists to work in the hemisphere. Shortly before his term was due to end in 2016, Duarte fled Veracruz in a government helicopter.
Duarte was one of a string of other governors from the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary party who were charged in corruption cases. He was eventually detained in Guatemala in April 2017 and extradited to Mexico. Meanwhile, his wife, Karime Macías, has been accused of living a life of luxury in central London.
They include fugitive former Chihuahua governor César Duarte and ex-governor Tomás Yarrington of Tamaulipas, who was arrested in Italy. Outgoing president Enrique Peña Nieto once hailed Duarte as part of a wave of young governors, who would modernise Mexico and renew the venerable Institution Revolutionary party (PRI).
Public disgust with the ex-governors is believed to have played a role in their party’s crushing defeat in the 1 July presidential and state elections. Instead, Duarte became a poster child for political corruption; the PRI, which for many years turned a blind eye to graft, eventually used Duarte’s arrest as proof that it was finally getting tough on wrongdoing
Peña Nieto, who leaves office 1 December with record-low approval ratings, abided Duarte’s excesses until the PRI suffered unprecedented defeats in June 2016 local ellections, losing control of several states including Veracruz, where the party wielded power for 87 years.
But Duarte remained true to his party allegiance to the bitter end: at his sentencing on Wednesday, he said: “I am still a soldier of the president; I am loyal to him.”
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