Veracruz Top Cop resigns after Texas properties worth millions discovered

Posted by DD Republished from  the Guardian with some commentary by me.

Arturo Bermúdez Zurita, public security secretary of Veracruz, and his wife purchased five properties with a combined value of $2.4 million dollars despite $3,200 monthly salary.  

David Agren in Mexico City

 Zurita reviewing his State Police

A senior Mexican police official has been forced to resign after investigative journalists revealed that he and his wife had built up a property empire incompatible with his humble public-sector salary.

Arturo Bermúdez Zurita, the public security secretary of the violence-wracked state of Veracruz, stood down on Thursday after reports emerged that he and his wife had purchased a string of properties in Texas worth millions of dollars.

His resignation is a rarity in a country where public officials often accumulate fabulous personal wealth, yet accusations of wrongdoing rarely bring serious consequences.

But analysts say that Bermúdez’s fate may have less to do with serious attempts to tackle Mexico’s entrenched corruption than with shifting political winds following recent regional elections in which the ruling Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) lost power in Veracruz and six other states.

Bermúdez resigned after the online news outlet Aristegui Noticias revealed that he and his wife had purchased five properties in suburban Houston with a combined value of $2.4m – even though he made a mere 59,500 pesos a month ($3,200), according to government transparency records.

Announcing his resignation on Twitter, Bermúdez denied any wrongdoing, saying he had always acted within the law. The Veracruz government issued a statement, saying Bermúdez was resigning to “clarify the origin of his personal patrimony and defend himself”.

The revelations mark yet another scandal for the outgoing state governor, Javier Duarte, who leaves office in December after a six-year term tarnished by spiraling violence, financial mismanagement and the murders of 19 journalists.

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DD:   For a long time, Veracruz has had “bad guys” as governors, with some having even been accused of being involved with drug trafficking, or making deals with millionaires, using the state's wealth. But there has never been anyone like Javier Duarte.

 Superior Auditor of the Federation (ASF), recently announced that Javier Duarte's Government had failed to substantiate what 35 billion pesos [US$1.9 billion] had been spent on.

From 2011 until the present day, 17 journalists have been killed, all of whom were critical of his government.

Under Javier Duarte’s government reports of women who have been disappeared have increased by 5000%. According to figures provided by the Attorney General, between 2006 and 2010 there were 32 registered cases, between 2011 and 2015 this increased to 1,647 allegations. The worst year recorded was 2014, in which 597 women were reported as missing.

According to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP), between December 2010 and August of last year, there were 3,136 murders in Veracruz. The Proceso correspondent in Veracruz, Noé Zavaleta, has recorded 13 hidden cemeteries, while out of the 950 disappearances reported to the Attorney General, it considers 155 of them to have been forced [i.e., at the hands of government agents]. From 2012 until 2015, 186 local and state police officers were investigated by the Deputy Prosecutor for Organized Crime Investigation (SEIDO) for alleged links to organized crime.

 State congresses in of Veracruz and Quintana Roo have in recent weeks passed laws or adjusted existing ones that they say will help combat corruption.  Federal Deputy Attorney General Salvador Sandoval said Monday that the state laws contravene a national anti-corruption system on the basis  that the new laws allow the outgoing Governors to appoint their own anti-corruption prosecutors. Critics have said the changes are intended to protect their outgoing governors from prosecution.   

PGR has filed a brief with the Supreme Court asking that that portion of the state anti-corruption law that allows the outgoing Governor to appoint the state anti-corruption prosecutors be voided.

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Frustration with Duarte and other powerful state governors led to an electoral rout for the PRI in June’s regional elections, which is now under pressure to show it is cracking down on corruption, analysts say.

“The PRI on the national level needs to vindicate itself and will likely do so by throwing someone in prison,” said Miguel Ángel Díaz, founder of the Veracruz publication Plumas Libres. “With scandal after scandal and the murders of so many journalists, Veracruz is an ideal place for scapegoating.”

Under Duarte, Veracruz became one of the country’s most violent states, and state police officials were often implicated in murders and forced disappearances.

“During these five years, it was a period of terror and silence,” Díaz said. “The police were kidnapping and extorting and disappearing people. Few media outlets dared to publish anything and those that did publish did so with fear.”

The incoming governor, Miguel Ángel Yunes, won office on an agenda of cleaning up Veracruz. But he was embarrassed earlier this year by a leaked recording in which he can be heard hashing out details of bidding for a $58m New York apartment. Yunes says he never purchased the property.

Analysts say allegations of widespread corruption in state governments are the consequence of political decentralisation over the past 20 years. Over that time, governors – who previously served at the president’s pleasure – gained autonomy and received increased federal funds to spend with little oversight.

According to Federico Estévez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, corruption by governors depended on political backing from the national government. “Now, the money is sent to them automatically and there are no countervailing powers,” he said.