Former Mexican governor investigated for corruption denounces persecution

The former governor of the Mexican state of Veracruz Miguel Ángel Yunes (2016-2018) said this Sunday he was the victim of a “cowardly strategy” behind the corruption complaint presented by the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) of the Mexican Government.

“It is totally reprehensible that organs of the Mexican State are used to persecute adversaries or to charge political insults, or – worse still – to empty hatred. That is typical of dictatorships, not democracies,” Yunes said in a statement.

The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) confirmed this Sunday in a brief statement that it is investigating Yunes for his management at the head of the Institute of Security and Social Services of State Workers (ISSSTE) between 2006 and 2010 as a result of two complaints filed by the FIU for illicit enrichment.

“I was never required by any authority for issues related to my management as general director of the ISSSTE because I always acted based on the Law,” defended Yunes, who was open to collaborating with the Prosecutor’s Office.

The former governor of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) said he appreciated “the respectful way” with which the Prosecutor’s Office announced the investigation, something that “contrasts with the cowardly and slanderous strategy used by other State organs.”

The former governor pointed out directly to the FIU, which depends on the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of having taken “from the trash can two complaints filed several years ago by two well-known crooks” that at the time came to nothing.

And he said that “it is not by chance” that this complaint came to light in the middle of the campaign for the midterm elections on June 6.

In that sense, he denounced “a strategy to hurt two of my sons who decided to make a career in the public sector, one of them as a candidate at this stage of the elections and the other as acting mayor of the city of Veracruz.”

When Yunes was governor, he waged a legal battle against his predecessor, Javier Duarte, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), today imprisoned for corruption.