The FGR investigates whether the former official did not reveal to the Ministry of Public Function (SFP) that he was the owner of at least seven houses and apartments in Mexico City and Acapulco, worth more than 70 million pesos, while he was the Legal Adviser of López Obrador.
Mexico City, February 10 (However).– Julio Scherer Ibarraformer Legal Adviser to the Presidency of the Republic, would be being investigated by General Prosecutor of the Republic (FGR) of course illicit enrichment and money launderingto the allegedly hide that he owned of at least seven properties during his stay in the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, revealed this Friday an investigation by the newspaper The country.
The investigation, carried out by reporter Zedryk Raziel, details that the investigation began in May 2022 “based on a complaint filed by the lawyer Paulo Díez Gargari,” according to documents obtained by the Spanish newspaper. The folder was turned over to the Special Prosecutor for Jurisdictional Control, Juan Ramos López, states the note, who is one of the officials closest to the Attorney General, Alejandro Gertz Manero.
The FGR is investigating whether the former official did not reveal to the Ministry of Public Function (SFP) that he was the owner of at least seven houses and apartments in Mexico City and Acapulco while he was López Obrador’s Legal Counsel. The countrywith documents in hand, ensures that the properties were acquired for 70.7 million pesos, about 3.7 million pesos, including a property that began to be built immediately after leaving the Government, in September 2021.
SCHERER RESPONDS: IT IS PART OF THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST ME
Scherer Ibarra defended himself against the accusations. “This matter is one more episode in the campaign that has been launched against me to discredit me,” he told the reporter for the Spanish newspaper, although he avoided referring to the properties. “Nothing mentioned there [en la denuncia] has any validity, since the documents were presented on time and they acted with total transparency and legality”.
In addition, the former Minister of the Presidency assured that “unfortunately politics led us to these things.” “I am very sorry that Mr. Paulo Díez is used as an instrument to damage my image and my reputation”, he said in a succinct position, “he concluded.
As recently as November, a federal Court confirmed the non-involvement in the process against three lawyers and the financial adviser of Banco Afirme who allegedly extorted the litigant Juan Collado Mocelo on the orders of Scherer Ibarra when he was Legal Counsel.
Judge Graciela Rocío Santes was in charge of confirming the order of non-linkage to the process initially issued by the Control Judge Felipe de Jesús Delgadillo Padierna; however, she also revoked the cancellation of the investigation by the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) issued by said Judge.
According to the resolution of the Fourth Unitary Court in Criminal Matters of Mexico City (CdMx), inconsistencies were found in the arguments presented by the FGR, including 20 pieces of evidence, highlighting the statements of Juan Collado and his son; as well as an official letter carried out by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
After the accusations against Scherer Ibarra of possible extortion, published for the first time in the newspaper Reform, the former official had declared: “I do not know Mr. Collado personally, nor am I aware of his conversations with his lawyers. Everything else, are inferences in bad faith, “he sentenced, although he acknowledged that he did meet with the lawyer’s children, at their request, although he said that he had referred the case to the FGR” because it was within his competence.
THE INDICATED PROPERTIES
The country details Scherer García allegedly “transferred the properties investigated by the FGR to a trust ‘for his children,'” according to his own sources, through a trust. The FGR has documentation that would supposedly indicate that the trust exists, but that several properties were not deposited there when he was a federal official.
“In any case and according to the file, although the lawyer is no longer the owner of some properties, his name appears as trustee, leaving a door open to the possibility of recovering ownership of the assets,” reports the Spanish newspaper.
El País pointed out that Scherer Ibarra “did not register the existence of the trust to which he supposedly transferred the seven properties that the Prosecutor’s Office is now investigating” and the FGR maintains that he continued to own several properties while he was an official.
One of them, a house in Lomas de Reforma, has a value of 27.5 million pesos and was bought in 1999 by Scherer Ibarra. In August 2021, Raziel’s report indicates, two months before leaving his position, he transferred the house to the aforementioned trust. A few days later, a representative of the trust – from Bancomer – requested a construction permit from the Miguel Hidalgo Mayor’s Office and the work is still ongoing, the report added, all this while still in a public position.
This would open the possibility of money laundering for the FGR. “Another case is that of an apartment in a condominium located on Paseo de las Palmas avenue, Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood, which was acquired by the former presidential adviser in April 2008 at a price of 4.3 million pesos,” it lists. The country.
In addition, Scherer Ibarra would have bought two more properties in the Mexican capital, one on Lago Alberto street, Anahuac neighborhood, which is an apartment “of 117 square meters that Scherer acquired in January 2016 for 3.7 million pesos,” and another in Calle de Ámsterdam, in the Hipódromo Condesa neighborhood, “where the former counselor and a group of five partners acquired a house worth 7.5 million dollars in September 2012,” of which Scherer was assigned 12.5 percent of the value of the property. site, for about 975 thousand dollars.
The FGR also has under its sights two properties in the Diamante area of Acapulco, the most exclusive in the area, details The country. One is an apartment in the El Palmar club, Tres Vidas subdivision, which Scherer would have obtained for 630.8 thousand dollars (about 12 million pesos) and “an 800-square-meter lot with a view of the beach in the Los Riscos condominium, in Punta Diamante”, which he would have acquired for a similar figure.
What Scherer Ibarra did declare to the SFP were two apartments worth 108 million pesos in the CdMx, which he allegedly acquired through a transfer of a trust in November 2018, two weeks before assuming the Ministry of the Presidency.
The country points out that the real pages that the reporter consulted show that “both properties are in a condominium in the Polanco neighborhood” and even the former public servant sold one of these properties in 2019 to Edgar Daniel Murillo Karam, brother of Enrique Peña Nieto’s former attorney, Jesús Murillo Karam, for just over 66 million pesos.