24 The Americas The EconomistAugust 29th 2020
2 multi-billion dollar budget. There he dis-
covered more corruption, he says. Under
Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s president from
2006 to 2012, Pemex sold ethane to an
ethylene plant owned by Braskem, in
which Odebrecht has a controlling stake, at
an “inexplicable discount” of 25%. Mr Lo-
zoya alleges that José Antonio Meade, the
presidential candidate in 2018 for Mr Peña’s
Institutional Revolutionary Party, ap-
proved the ethane contract as a member of
Pemex’s advisory council.
Mr Lozoya claims that in 2013 Mr Videg-
aray bullied him into approving the pur-
chase by Pemex of a fertiliser plant for
$275m, well above its true value. The seller,
Altos Hornos de México, a steelmaker, al-
legedly gave Mr Lozoya’s wife a seaside villa
worth $1.9m 12 days after the deal went
through. Nearly all the people Mr Lozoya
accused have denied wrongdoing and
many have sued him.
The allegations, which taint nearly all of
amlo’s main rivals over the past 20 years,
play into his hands. They are acutely em-
barrassing for the two main opposition
parties. To many they make Mr Peña’s ener-
gy reforms, which ended Pemex’s 75-year
monopoly of drilling in an oil-rich country,
seem illegitimate. amlo has always de-
nounced them (and championed Pemex)
and may now try to revoke them. The scan-
dal distracts from his mishandling of the
covid-19 pandemic. Mexico’s death toll,
62,076, is the world’s third-highest.
There are reasons to doubt Mr Lozoya.
His testimony could well keep him out of
jail and protect his wife and sister, in
whose names he registered houses and off-
shore companies. “People can say anything
in exchange for reductions in sentences,”
he observed in 2017, after he was accused of
corruption by Odebrecht employees who
were co-operating with Brazilian investi-
gators. Perhaps that includes Mr Lozoya,
his critics say.
Ricardo Anaya, the pan’s presidential
candidate in 2018, denies Mr Lozoya’s claim
that in August 2014 he received a bribe of
$600,000 in the congressional car park. Mr
Anaya had left the chamber of deputies five
months earlier to become general secretary
of the party. Some who believe Mr Lozoya’s
allegations doubt that he witnessed every-
thing he says he did.
The case comes at a pivotal moment.
Activists have spent the past decade draw-
ing up anti-corruption and criminal-jus-
tice reforms and cajoling politicians to im-
plement them. Criminal trials have shifted
from the “inquisitorial” system used, for
example, in France, in which the court
takes an active part in establishing facts, to
an “adversarial” one similar to that in the
United States. Now investigators must use
forensic equipment and, in corruption
cases, dig through financial records. The
reform is young; judges and prosecutorshave yet to master their new roles.
In response to scandals in his adminis-
tration, Mr Peña agreed to set up an “anti-
corruption system”, featuring a strong, in-
dependent attorney-general, a dedicated
anti-corruption prosecutor and a monitor-
ing role for citizens’ groups. These institu-
tions should have been primed to investi-
gate Mr Lozoya’s claims. But Mr Peña
gummed up the anti-graft machinery. He
failed to make the attorney-general’s office
independent and nominated anti-corrup-
tion magistrates to the federal administra-
tive court without proper vetting.
amlo has been no keener to oil the
gears. The attorney-general he appointed,
Alejandro Gertz Manero, advised his cam-
paign. The government appointed the anti-
corruption prosecutor, María de la Luz Mi-
jangos, without soliciting applications
from other candidates. Although the law
gives her responsibility for investigating
the allegations made by Mr Lozoya, she is
playing no visible role.
A dutiful slog through the evidence,
conducted by independent investigators,
is not what amloseems to have in mind.
He has often proposed holding a public
vote on whether former presidents should
be prosecuted, most recently at his morn-
ing press conference on August 24th. He
has mused about holding it on the same
day as congressional elections, due in July- That is impossible to square with the
attorney-general’s independence.
The leak of Mr Lozoya’s testimony has
made the investigators’ job more difficult
by subverting the presumption of inno-
cence and, perhaps, provoking suspects to
destroy evidence. For amloit serves as a
prop. He leafed through the deposition in a
video entitled “The neoliberal period in
Mexico was synonymous with corruption”.
At a press conference he showed a video of
senators’ aides handling bags of cash. It
demonstrated “the filth of the corrupt re-
gime”, the president declared.
amlois personally honest and ostenta-
tiously frugal. And there are no reports of
thievery in his government on the scale Mr
Lozoya alleges. But his political movement
may not be as clean as he claims. A day after
Mr Lozoya’s deposition came to light, vid-
eos emerged of amlo’s brother, Pío, receiv-
ing bundles of money in 2015 from an offi-
cial of the Chiapas state government. amlo
explained that the money was given by “the
people” to finance Morena, the political
party he founded. But it seems to violate a
ban on supporting parties with large cash
payments, which is supposed to ensure
that criminals do not finance elections.
“We are not the same as corrupt govern-
ments of the past,” amloinsisted. Never-
theless, he agreed that the matter should be
investigated.
Surveys show that Mexicans believe
amlo’s claim to be an anti-corruption cru-
sader. But small-scale graft may have in-
creased during his government. More Mex-
icans reported paying bribes in 2019 than
two years earlier. amlohas slashed the sal-
aries of senior public servants, which in-
creases the incentive to demand kickbacks.
Mr Lozoya’s accusations have kept Mex-
icans’ attention on the past. They further
discredit a demoralised opposition, and set
up Morena to do well in next year’s mid-
term elections. Justice for the alleged mis-
creants may not be what the president
wants most. For his purposes, it is enough
to see them squirm. 7Two storms battered the Caribbean before heading towards the United States. Marco
led, becoming a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, followed by Laura, which
strengthened to a category-four hurricane. The 12th named Atlantic storm this year,
Laura arrived earlier than any other with that place in the sequence. It struck Haiti
(pictured), where at least 21 people died, and the Dominican Republic, where four died.Sibling storms in the Caribbean