Tag Archives: Mexico

Corruption: Fuel for Femicide’s Fire

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On January 31, 2022, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of La Paz, Bolivia, regarding new revelations about Richard Choque Flores, who had raped upwards of 70 women and committed at least two femicides. (The term “femicide” refers to the intentional murder of women for gender-motivated reasons.) The La Paz protesters were not simply expressing their horror at Choque Flores’ heinous crimes. They were also denouncing the judicial and prosecutorial corruption that had enabled his continued predation. In fact, Choque Flores had already been arrested in 2015 and sentenced to 30 years in prison. His sentence was then reduced to a house arrest in 2019, whereupon he was able to murder two women from the comfort of his own home. How did Richard Choque Flores manage to get his sentence reduced in the first place? With a bribe of US$3,500 and a bottle of whisky.

Sadly, this story is not unique. In Bolivia as well as other Latin American countries (such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico), femicides not only occur at appallingly high rates, but they rarely ever get resolved. While femicide is certainly rooted in patriarchy, its rampant scope in Latin America cannot merely be explained by the misogyny of individual perpetrators. In 2021 alone, there were at least 108 known femicide cases in Bolivia, of which only 36% were solved. In Mexico, around 10 women are reportedly murdered per day (though the actual number is likely much higher). The femicide epidemic is by no means “accidental, ‘involuntary,’ or the result of ‘mere institutional incapacity.’” Rather, it is the product of profound and systematic corruption, which allows perpetrators to violate women with impunity, while imposing prohibitive barriers to justice for victims and their families.

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From “Final Period” to “Business as Usual”: Why Has AMLO’s Ambitious Promise to Combat Mexican Corruption Faltered

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In 2018, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) won a landslide victory in Mexico’s presidential election, and his leftist Morena Party won a large majority in Congress. AMLO and Morena campaigned on a populist platform that promised a “Fourth Transformation” of Mexico (the other three being Mexican Independence, the Liberal Reformation, and the Revolution); this Fourth Transformation would, they claimed, eliminate historic government abuse and tackle widespread government corruption. Now, more than halfway through AMLO’s six-year term, the credibility of that anticorruption rhetoric has dramatically faded. Not only has AMLO’s government failed to deliver on his promise to usher in a new era of clean government, but in many respects his administration has been moving in the wrong direction.

Understanding the ways in which AMLO’s approach to governance has undermined rather than strengthened Mexico’s fight against corruption is crucial to getting the country back on track. Four problems with the AMLO regime’s approach to anticorruption are especially significant: Continue reading →

Why AMLO Won’t Let the Pemex Investigation Clean Up Corruption in Mexico

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The case was expected to be a “blockbuster.” In July 2020, Emilio Lozoya Austin, former director of Mexican state-owned oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), was extradited from Spain to Mexico on charges of bribery, money laundering, and racketeering. The most significant of the charges related to his receipt of $10.5 million in bribes from embattled Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. Upon his return to Mexico, Lozoya leveled bombshell accusations in a plea for prosecutorial leniency, claiming that former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, along with his former treasury minister, two other former presidents, five former senators, and two former presidential candidates, orchestrated an extensive corruption scheme throughout the government ranging from securing bribes to passing controversial energy reform legislation. Lozoya’s accusations appeared to confirm information that Mexican authorities uncovered years ago. Back in 2017, after Odebrecht admitted to paying millions of dollars in bribes in Mexico, a Mexican special prosecutor determined that in 2012 Lozoya, then the newly-minted Pemex director, awarded Odebrecht several lucrative contracts in exchange for bribes. Then-President Peña Nieto, however, fired the special prosecutor and stalled the investigation.

But Mexico’s current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who made anticorruption a cornerstone of his 2018 presidential campaign, vowed to reignite the investigation and prosecution of Lozoya. And last year’s extradition of Lozoya to Mexico seemed to be a sign that Mexico was (finally) on the verge of a real reckoning with endemic corruption akin to the Lava Jato (Car Wash) investigation in Brazil. Lava Jato, which began as an investigation into alleged corruption and money laundering by Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras, eventually ensnared Odebrecht, exposed the company’s decade-and-a-half long bribery scheme in a dozen countries, and led to the recovery of more than $5 billion in government funds and the conviction of more than 170 people—including several senior politicians. Despite recent setbacks (including the premature disbanding of the Lava Jato Task Force and the judicial invalidation of the operation’s highest-profile conviction), the Lava Jato investigation nonetheless provides a template for how an investigation that starts with one corrupt official at a state-owned country can snowball into a national reckoning that disrupts a long-entrenched corrupt system. The parallels between Lava Jato and investigation into Pemex are obvious, and many anticorruption advocates, both inside and outside of Mexico, were hoping for something similar.

Instead, nearly a year after Lozoya’s arrest, there has been little progress on the case, and it seems increasingly unlikely that this investigation will prompt the same kind of anticorruption reckoning as in Brazil. Indeed, court-watchers now fear that Lozoya and those he named will escape any real consequences. While many factors have contributed to this disappointing result, an apparent lack of enthusiasm and commitment from AMLO and his government has played an important role. Instead of doing everything in his power to move the investigation forward, AMLO slashed the budget of the Mexican Attorney General’s Office (FGR), which is leading the Pemex investigation, condoned soft treatment for Lozoya, and has seemed generally ambivalent about the investigation’s apparent lack of progress.

AMLO’s behavior is this regard seems puzzling, since one would think that AMLO has every incentive to support the investigation. After all, AMLO’s 2018 anticorruption platform was wildly popular, and—especially given that his support is waning—revitalizing this anticorruption narrative might improve the standing of his newcomer political party, Morena, heading into this coming June’s midterm elections. So why has AMLO’s support for the Lozoya investigation been so tepid? There are, I think, two main explanations, both of which cast doubt on the sincerity of AMLO’s commitment to rooting out corruption in Mexico’s government.

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Sunshine or Sunset? The Latest Threat to Freedom of Information in Mexico

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In a country beset by extreme and seemingly intractable corruption, Mexico’s National Institute for Access to Information (INAI)—which runs Mexico’s freedom of information system—has stood out as an unusually effective mechanism for promoting transparency, accountability, and integrity. The INAI’s effectiveness stems from its binding legal authority and independence, as provided by constitutional provisions passed in 2013. The Institute can and has compelled other government agencies to improve their information disclosure policies, and, perhaps most significantly, the INAI can override other government agencies’ denial of information access requests. The INAI has substantial leverage to ensure greater government compliance by way of meaningful fines and effective injunctions for noncompliance. The INAI also moves lightning fast; the INAI regularly satisfies its statutory obligations to respond to requests within twenty business days and to deliver documents within thirty. The INAI does not charge search fees, and all uncovered information is available to the wider public. Citizens can challenge decisions to withhold information, and they routinely prevail.

The INAI’s broad freedom of information mandate makes the agency a powerful actor in exposing corruption (see, for example, here, here, and here). Perhaps most notably, the Institute enabled discovery of former President Pena Nieto’s secret mansion (“the White House Scandal”), the diversion of over $400 million allotted to public services, and embezzlement in public-private ventures in Mexico’s vast energy sector. More broadly, despite all the well-known deficiencies of Mexico’s anticorruption institutions, the INAI has been globally lauded for its role in government transparency.

Given this, why is Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly referred to by his initials “AMLO”), who ran and won on an anticorruption platform, so keen on eradicating the agency? In a press conference earlier this year, AMLO proposed decommissioning all of Mexico’s independent agencies, singling out the INAI as an especially egregious example of bloated bureaucracy. His rationale boils down to three main arguments: (1) the INAI hasn’t ended corruption, (2) the INAI costs too much, and (3) the INAI’s functions can be provided by the Secretariat of Public Functions (SFP), a non-independent body that performs federal government audits and reports directly to the president. These arguments are unconvincing, to say the least.

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In Mexico, Justice Will Remain a Family Matter

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Judicial corruption in Mexico is a pervasive problem. And while high-level scandals tend to grab the headlines (see, for example, here, here, and here), much of the corruption is more pedestrian. While the causes of Mexico’s judicial corruption problem are various and complex, one persistent contributing factor is the endemic nepotism throughout the judiciary.

Of the more than 50 types of position in the judicial branch (including both judgeships and various administrative positions), only two—federal circuit and district court judgeships—use a competitive merit-based hiring process. For the rest, judges can choose whom they please, with little oversight. Moreover, once hired, these individuals have an insurmountable advantage in promotion in the judiciary, given that most job postings (and, informally, judgeships) require that the candidate have previous experience in the judicial branch. And even with respect to circuit and district judgeships, which are supposed to be filled through an open and merit-based competitive selection process run by a body called the Federal Judicial Council (CJF), in practice the CJF often creates “special” vacancies with different criteria (in effect, lower standards).

As a result of all this, nepotism in judicial hiring and promotion is pervasive, as judges are able to secure positions for friends and family. At least 51% of Mexico’s judges and magistrates are related to someone else working in the judiciary, with that number as high as 80% in some states. (To take one particularly egregious but not totally anomalous example, in one judge’s chambers, 17 employees were related to the judge.) This nepotism is not only corrupt in itself, but it also contributes to other forms of corruption. For one thing, corrupt judges can appoint those who will participate in, or at least be complicit in, corrupt practices—in some cases appointing individuals recommended by organized crime groups. But even when such deliberate wrongdoing is not the issue, untrained or unprofessional judicial bureaucrats and judges are more susceptible to corruption, and more likely to create the kinds of delays and inefficiencies in the system that both invite and obscure corrupt actions.

There hadn’t been much appetite in the Mexican Government to address the judicial nepotism problem until reform-minded President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar took office. Since February 2020, both men have been enthusiastically lobbying for a judicial reform package deemed the most ambitious since 1994. This bill, overwhelmingly passed by the Mexican Senate and Chamber of Deputies in recent months, is a behemoth, with a variety of significant structural changes to the judicial branch. Among these many reforms are several measures designed, at least in part, to address the problem of judicial nepotism: Continue reading →

The Significance of Mexico’s Upcoming Referendum on Lifting Former Presidents’ Immunity from Prosecution

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Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) has repeatedly assailed Mexico’s former presidents as corrupt. However, despite his attacks, AMLO has said that he does not want to pursue criminal actions against his predecessors. Therefore, AMLO raised eyebrows this past September when he called for a referendum that asks citizens to vote on the question whether “the relevant authorities should, in accordance with the applicable laws and procedures, investigate and if appropriate punish, the presumed crimes committed by former presidents,” specifically naming former presidents Enrique Peña Nieto, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, and Felipe Calderón. Opponents challenged the referendum as unconstitutional, on the grounds that Mexico’s Constitution prohibits popular consultations on matters involving guarantees like the presumption of innocence and due process. However, Mexico’s Supreme Court narrowly held, by a 6-5 vote, that the referendum would be constitutional, but voted 8-3 to modify it. The Court altered the language by deleting the reference to the ex-presidents and the phrase “presumed crimes” so that the referendum now reads: “Do you agree or not that the relevant authorities should, in accordance with the constitution and legal framework, undertake a process of clearing up political decisions taken in previous years by politicians, with an aim to guaranteeing justice and the rights of possible victims?” Mexico’s lower house of Congress approved the revised referendum and set the date of the vote for August 2021. AMLO, however, wants the referendum to be held in June 2021, during Mexico’s midterm elections.

Seizing on the vagueness of the referendum and AMLO’s hostility towards his predecessors, AMLO’s opponents have attacked him for attempting to undermine the judicial system and seek political revenge by having a public vote on whether to prosecute and convict former presidents. Other critics have argued the referendum, which is both vaguely worded and non-binding, will not have any real impact, and amounts to little more than political virtue signaling intended to boost AMLO’s party in the upcoming midterm elections.

To a certain extent, I agree with the latter criticism. AMLO’s primary motivation in promoting this referendum is likely political: He wants to (re)create a positive association between his party and the fight against corruption. It’s probably not a coincidence that the push for the referendum comes at a time when one of Mexico’s biggest corruption scandals is unfolding, with former President Peña Nieto accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. It’s probably also not a coincidence that AMLO wants to hold the referendum vote on the same day as the 2021 midterm elections. Despite having won power in a landslide in 2018, AMLO and his party are currently in political trouble. Mexico continues to face economic stagnation and high crime, and AMLO’s administration has failed to control the coronavirus. As for AMLO’s promise to rid his country of corruption—a major component of his presidential campaign—he hasn’t made much progress here either. AMLO’s anticorruption credentials have been further tarnished by a leaked video showing AMLO’s brother receiving packages of money from a government functionary that were used to strengthen AMLO’s political party ahead of the 2018 election. It seems that AMLO is attempting to divert attention from his political and policy failures by introducing a referendum that will focus attention on the corruption of prior administrations.

But just because there is a political motivation behind the referendum does not mean that the referendum won’t have a meaningful impact. It likely will, whichever way it comes out.

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Is the Global Magnitsky Sanctions Program Working?

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The 2016 Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (GMA), inspired by the imprisonment and death of Sergei Magnitsky in Russia after his discovery of $230 million in tax fraud orchestrated by the Russian government, stands as the boldest authorization of U.S. economic sanctions in the fight against corruption. Executive Order 13818, issued in December 2017, designated the first sanctioned parties under GMA, enabling asset freezes and travel bans.

Since then, approximately 150 individuals and entities worldwide have been sanctioned for corruption under the GMA. (The GMA also allows for sanctions against human rights violators, and such authority was exercised to target 75 more individuals and entities.) The list includes current and former government officials—or those acting on their behalf—in Cambodia, China, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Iraq, Latvia, Lebanon, Mexico, Nicaragua, Serbia, South Africa, South Sudan, Uganda, and Uzbekistan, among others. The designations include familiar names in the anticorruption community such as Gulnara Karimova, former Uzbek first daughter convicted of embezzlement and other corruption totaling more than $1.3 billion, Dan Gertler, the Israeli billionaire who earned millions of dollars through underpriced mining contracts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angel Rondon Rijo, a Dominican lobbyist central to Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht’s $4.5 billion Latin America-wide bribery-for-contracts scheme. Other sanctioned parties include the former Gambian president and first lady for misappropriating $50 million in state funds, a former Mexican judge and a former Mexican governor who took bribes from drug cartels, and a Sudanese businessman who, along with senior South Sudanese government officials, embezzled millions of dollars from a government food program.

The GMA represents a new era of so-called “smart sanctions.” Instead of limiting transactions with an entire country—as in the case of U.S. sanctions programs targeting Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria—these individualized sanctions are designed to maximize harm and minimize collateral economic damage by restricting only bad actors’ access to global commerce, not that of entire populations. This approach is catching on outside the United States, with Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union recently announcing their own GMA-esque sanctions, while other countries, like Australia and Japan, are actively considering adopting similar programs.

Yet, a fundamental question remains: is the GMA working?

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Guest Post: Anonymous Companies Are Undermining Mexico’s Public Health

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Today’s guest post is by Miguel Ángel Gómez Jácome, the Communications Coordinator at the Mexican civil society organization Impunidad Cero (Zero Impunity).

The COVID-19 pandemic has already affected millions of people. (As of the time this piece was initially drafted, around 2 million people had been infected; the exponential spread of the virus means that by the time this piece is published, that number is likely to be much higher.) And while Mexico has not yet been as severely impacted as other countries, official statistics (which likely understate the true prevalence) already report thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths. To confront this problem, Mexico, like other countries, will need to marshal its resources effectively. Unfortunately, though, Mexico’s ability to manage the COVID-19 epidemic is threatened by Mexico’s epidemic of embezzlement in the health sector, much of it facilitated by anonymous shell companies. This widespread corruption drains away vital public resources needed to combat public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2020, two civil society organizations (Justicia Justa (Just Justice) and Impunidad Cero (Zero Impunity)), documented the extent of the problem in a research report entitled Fake Invoices: The Health Sector Epidemic. The research found that between 2014 and 2019, 837 shell companies issued 22,933 fake invoices to 90 health institutions across the country (in 30 of Mexico’s 32 states, as well as the federal government), ultimately embezzling a total of over 4 billion pesos (roughly $176 million US dollars) from the health sector—an amount that could have paid for around 80,000 hospital beds or between 3,400 and 6,900 ventilators. (To put this in context, Mexico currently has 5,000 ventilators in the whole country, and the government is looking to acquire 5,000 more.) And the problem is only getting bigger: According to Mexico’s Tax Administration authority (the SAT), the number of anonymous shell companies in the country has increased from 111 in 2014 to over 9,000 in 2020.

To crack down on the abuse of shell companies to embezzle public funds from the health sector (as well as other sectors), the authors of the Fake Invoices report propose three responses: Continue reading →

New Podcast, Featuring Leonor Ortiz Monasterio and Miguel Meza

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, I interview Leonor Ortiz Monasterio and Miguel Meza of the Mexican civil society organization Mexicanos Contra Corrupcion y la Impunidad (MCCI) (“Mexicans Against Impunity and Corruption). They describe how MCCI works to fight corruption in Mexico, and critically evaluate the anticorruption efforts of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO), who ran in large part on an anticorruption platform, but whose approach to anticorruption during his first year in office has been met with significant controversy.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

Guest Post: Expert Interviews on Corruption Control in Latin America

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Today’s guest post is from Columbia University Professor Paul Lagunes, who this year is also a Visiting Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy:

Elections in Latin America are freer and fairer than they used to be, and, with rare exceptions, political power in the region is no longer monopolized by a single individual, junta, or party. From Chile to Mexico, legal reforms have promoted higher levels of government transparency and citizen participation. But in spite of these improvements, the region continues to grapple with systemic corruption. Not only are individuals asked to pay bribes by lower-level government officials, but scandals such as Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) in Brazil, La Estafa Maestra (“The Master Fraud”) in Mexico, and La Línea (“The Line”) in Guatemala have revealed grand corruption at the most senior levels, making the fight against corruption a top priority for the region.

Prompted by these concerns, I contributed to organizing a conference at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy on corruption control in Latin America, which has already been featured (with links to the conference videos) on this blog. Some of the conference panelists stayed long enough that we were able to interview them about their important work. Tony Payan, my colleague at the Baker Institute and an expert on U.S.-Mexico border issues, agreed to conduct the interviews.

The videos of these interviews are now publicly available, and are well worth viewing for those interested in hearing a diverse range of perspectives on the corruption challenges currently facing Latin America. In this post I will provide links to the interviews as well as a brief summary of their content. (There’s also an online website, where you can find all the interviews, here.) Continue reading →