Mexican president-elect accused of laundering money in his campaign
Mexico's ruling conservatives lent their support to accusations that President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto benefited from laundered money in his campaign, piling more pressure on the country's next leader.
Gustavo Madero, chairman of the National Action Party (PAN) of outgoing President Felipe Calderón, told reporters on Thursday he was presenting a legal complaint about money laundering to the federal attorney general's office.
“Any money coming from illicit sources can be laundered money” Madero said. ”It could be stolen, it could be from tax evasion, it could be money they have taken from a company, from the government or from state governments.”
Madero was speaking at a joint news conference with Jesús Zambrano, chairman of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the main leftist grouping behind presidential runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has led the accusations against Peña Nieto.
The attorney general's office does not have the power to overturn the July 1 election.
However, money laundering charges could damage Peña Nieto, whose win puts the presidency back in the hands of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI ruled Mexico from 1929 until 2000, when it was defeated by the PAN.
Peña Nieto won the July 1 election with 38.2% of the vote, against Lopez Obrador with 31.6% and PAN's Josefina Vazquez Mota with 25.4%.
Lopez Obrador has also legally challenged the vote with the electoral tribunal, accusing Peña Nieto of buying votes and calling for the election to be annulled.
The electoral tribunal has until September to rule on those charges and officially declare Peña Nieto president. It is widely expected to uphold the election.
Peña Nieto, who is due to take office on Dec. 1, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has called his win “categorical.” Calderón has congratulated him on his victory, as have dozens of world leaders.
Responding to the joint PAN-PRD announcement, PRI chairman Pedro Joaquin Coldwell dismissed the allegations as unfounded and called on the attorney general's office to bring defamation charges against his party's accusers.
“They should punish those that are using lies as an instrument of political propaganda,” he told a news conference.
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The PRD on the other hand, is going to follow the process in the courts, but once the courts ratified Peña Nieto´s victory, they will turn their back on Lopez Obrador for good, the new leader in the left is Marcelo Ebrard and he will start planning his bid for 2018.
Did you mean a “failed state” like in the hundreds of favelas where dozens of millions of black brazilians live in poverty, crime, disenfranchised by systematic racism? Can you elaborate on that?
I know you are from Holland but it looks like you visited the barrio of Tepito in Mexico City or perhaps Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana or Monterrey itself LOL.
If thats true, good luck to him, and he's probably the next President
Perhaps because those millions were forced to move north.
Jose, Jose, you must be living in La La Land if you think that Mexican society is not racist or you are trying to pull the wool over somebody's eyes.
I traveled the length and breadth of Mexico for too many years to swallow that line.
That being said, I confess to a love and appreciation of Mexico and it's people.
Every society has got its problems and I have to tell you that Mexico´s are a legion, but racism is certainly not a main issue in our society, and you can google that all you can, but if you make a simple research about discrimination in South American you will be shocked. And I know because I have traveled to the region as well. Every south american of european ancestry presumes that publicly, its like it is some kind of diploma or higher degree of some kind. Nobody in Mexico gives a damn about where your parents come from. Mexico´s a melting pot as much as many other nations in the americas, we have indigenous, european, asian and african ancestry as well but our mainstream culture is mestizo.
“The World; Racism? Mexico's in Denial”
Mexicans typically deny that discrimination exists in their country, however many living descendants of Moctezuma are not allowed to eat in some of Mexico City's best restaurants.
Now it is the degree of Indianness, or the darkness of brown skin, that determines status. Many Mexicans living in the cities rely on hair dyes, skin lighteners and blue or green contact lenses to appear more white or European and less Indian”
That's an article from 1995, and not a very reliable one. There is no restaurant in Mexico that will deny entrance to indigenous or mestizo people. The article won't mention one simply because it is a lie.
I bet you that you had a hard time finding a magazine article about racism in Mexico, I can find hundreds of academic investigations, studies, tesis, books and reports on racism in Brazil, and not from 1995, but today.
No I didn't have a hard time to find a “magazine” article(New York Times) about racism in Mexico nor I need a person living probably in US to denied what I saw with my own eyes in Mexico.
Oaxaqueños, Chiapanecos and many more strongly disagree with you aswell.
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