Andorra Asks U.S. To Investigate Peña Nieto's Flights on Collado's Planes

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

The police of the European country requests the identification of the passengers of the two airplanes of the imprisoned lawyer. The former president acknowledged to EL PAÍS that he flew "two or three times" with the lawyer and defends the innocence of his "friend."

Former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto waves in 2018 as he arrives at Ministro Pistarini Airport in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he traveled to participate in a G-20 summit.

The former president of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) used after leaving power the planes of the lawyer imprisoned for money laundering and organized crime Juan Ramón Collado, according to a confidential report of the Police of Andorra to which EL PAÍS has had access.

Investigators in the European country have asked the judicial authorities in the USA, where Collado searched his aircraft, for data on the flights of these planes on US territory. The purpose is to identify his passengers. The lawyer owns a Cessna Citation 650 (1995 model) and a Bombardier Challenger 601 that he acquired with a loan of 5.2 million guaranteed by his financial network in Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA), where he moved 110 million dollars between 2006 and 2015.

The Andorran police also claim that Collado, who has been incarcerated in the northern prison of Mexico City since mid-2019, paid for a medical treatment in a US hospital worth 91,000 euros to a daughter of the former president. The former PRI leader denies this to EL PAÍS.

The novel link between the lawyer and Peña Nieto appears in an unpublished report of the Andorran police of June 2022, which is part of the Operation Jet investigation. A court in the European country is investigating whether Collado, who is the main defendant in the investigation, committed money laundering and a crime against the administration of justice.

In a telephone conversation with this newspaper, Peña Nieto admits having a relationship of "friendship" with Collado, defends his innocence and recognizes that he flew in the aircraft of the imprisoned lawyer after leaving the presidency of Mexico, in 2018. "I traveled three times on [Collado's] plane. We flew sometime to Miami and, from there, to Madrid. I remember it very well. It was on one or two occasions. Always because he invited me and with him," he specifies. "I have never used his plane for personal purposes," adds the former president.

Peña Nieto details that he traveled in Collado's plane at the beginning of 2019 to transfer his daughter to the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester (Minnesota, USA), where she underwent surgery after suffering a skiing accident. The former president denies that his "friend" paid for this treatment. "He did not pay anything. My daughter had an accident in 2019 very delicate. She almost became paralyzed. It was a month and a bit after I left the presidency. [Collado] paid absolutely nothing from the hospital. Nothing. He was very close to me in a position to help after the mishap. I can tell you that [the expenses of the operation] were covered by my daughter's medical insurance," says the PRI member.

The former president acknowledges that Collado also "helped to transfer" his daughter to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore (Maryland, USA). He denies that his relative underwent a medical treatment in a Miami clinic paid for by Collado, as the Andorran police claim.

The ex-president and his "great affection" for the lawyer are under suspicion

Peña Nieto admits feeling a "great affection" for Collado. "I have great gratitude for him," he says. He says that, although he has known him since his university days, he intensified the bond during the last phase of his term and has attended as a guest at his home in Acapulco. "I know his family, especially one of his sons, who was a classmate of one of my daughters in school."

The former leader defends the lawyer's innocence. "He has never been my lawyer. I have not hired him in any case. Is he my friend? Yes. Do I know him? Yes. Do I have a deep relationship? I would say no, but today I can tell you that I have enormous appreciation and esteem for the gesture of gratitude he made to my daughter. I wish your matter to be resolved. Do I believe you are innocent? I do.

Regarding Collado's fortune in Andorra, where the lawyer -as EL PAÍS revealed- moved more than 110 million through a network of 24 accounts, Dutch shell companies (with no activity) and front men, Peña Nieto answers: "I don't know people's wealth. I do not know if it is legal or not. Everyone has the right to have money as long as they report it fiscally. "

The former president maintains that Collado did not inform him that he was accused of laundering nor that the Andorran authorities had seized his millionaire patrimony in 2016 when questioning its origin. "I learned about that issue from the press. I have never discussed it with Collado. I have learned about everything from what has been published. I didn't even know that [Collado] had money in Andorra and that his accounts had been seized. I had no idea," said the former president.

Peña Nieto also says he is unaware of the controversy raised by the halt of the investigations in the Principality against the lawyer in October 2018. The Pyrenean country's magistrate who was investigating the case was then forced to provisionally bury the laundering investigation and release the lawyer's funds in the BPA following a report from the Mexican Attorney General's Office (PGR) - which is what the Prosecutor's Office was then called - justifying the origin of the fortune. The exculpatory document, which was issued during the last phase of Peña Nieto's term, argued that the lawyer's wealth in the BPA was licit and had its origin in his work as a lawyer and partner in the firm Collado y Asociados and in the income derived from Prenda Oro, a corporation dedicated to granting micro-credits in exchange for pawns that his father created in 1999.

Andorra reopened the investigation against Collado after he was arrested in July 2019 in Mexico, already under the presidential mandate of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Peña Nieto claims not to know that the PGR keeps open an investigation folder on the "misleading report" that - according to the Andorran Police- allowed Collado's funds to be unblocked in this Principality. It is a procedure in which the lawyer and the former general coordinator of the investigation, the civil servant Alberto Alcántara, who died in 2021 of covid, are accused. "I don't know the matter. I don't know," the PRI member said.

The Principality requests the seizure of the assets of the lawyer under investigation in Spain

The Andorran Police asks in its latest report to request the Spanish judicial authorities to trace Collado's assets in this country in order to seize them. The investigators demand the identification of the assets and real estate registered in the property registry in the name of the lawyer and eight instrumental companies.

The main building of the Canalejas Center in Madrid, where lawyer Juan Ramón Collado owns a luxury home, in January 2021.

The agents want to know how Collado bought in 2019 a 233-meter apartment with a storage room and two parking spaces in the megaluxury Four Seasons hotel in Madrid. It is a property valued at 4.5 million in the most expensive area of the Spanish capital, which is located in a building that acts as a fortress of great fortunes known as Centro Canalejas, as revealed by this newspaper. Six days before being arrested in Mexico, Collado transferred from the BPA to a BBVA account in Madrid 9.6 million dollars (10.5 million euros). The Andorran police today classify this money as "investigated funds of presumably criminal origin."

Collado has more than 65 million retained by judicial imperative in Andorra, a country of 77,140 inhabitants shielded until 2017 by banking secrecy. EL PAÍS has unsuccessfully tried to obtain his version through his lawyer in the European country.

Indoor swimming pool located on the eighth floor of Centro Canalejas, where the lawyer Juan Ramón Collado has a mega luxury apartment.

CANALEJAS CENTER

The controversial lawyer carries the nickname of the lawyer of the powerful for having defended prominent figures of the Mexican machinery of power such as the former governor of Quintana Roo Mario Villanueva (PRI); the former Pemex union leader Carlos Romero Deschamps or Raúl Salinas de Gortari, brother of the former president of Mexico Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994).

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