Thread by @KurtHackbarth

In recent articles (e.g. jacobinmag.com/2020/08/pena-n…), I have reported on how the energy privatization reforms of Enrique Peña Nieto were passed by bribing members of Congress.

Now, in a major development, 3 ex-senators from the conservative PAN party have been directly implicated.

They are Jorge Luis Lavalle, Roberto Gil Zuarth and Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca. Lavalle was arrested on Friday; as a sitting governor, Cabeza de Vaca has immunity from prosecuction, which they were already seeking to strip for other crimes.
jornada.com.mx/notas/2021/04/…

Also under the gun - and reportedly on deck for charges - are 3 other ex-legislators: Salvador Vega Casillas, Ernesto Cordero and the PAN's 2018 presidential candidate, Ricardo Anaya, then Speaker of the House.

jornada.com.mx/2021/04/10/pol…

In his first years, Peña Nieto, with the support of the PRI-PAN-PRD parties, passed a series of "structural reforms" that were so much to the liking of the powers-that-be that Time Magazine devoted a headline (which has aged particularly badly) that he was "Saving Mexico".

What was really going on -and here's the story the international media is much less interested in telling- was a triangulation of $$ from sources such as the Brazilian construction giant #Odebrecht through the Peña Nieto campaign and into legislators' pockets to pass the reforms.

Now, thanks to the dogged work of the Financial Intelligence Unit led by Santiago Nieto -and the government's cooperating witness, Emilio Lozoya, who engineered the whole thing- this web of complicity, graft, and bribery is coming out, piece by piece.

unomasuno.com.mx/la-unidad-de-i…