Raúl Salinas
Raúl Salinas Reuters

Former president Carlos Salinas’s brother, Raúl Salinas, who made the Forbes' list of Most Corrupt Mexicans last December, is now in the clear, after court exonerated him definitely of unjust enrichment. Before heading out on vacation, the Third Criminal Court Unit solved the 80/2013 appeal, filed in fact by Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, considering the PGR did not credit the increase in Salinas’s fortune, a product of corrupt acts as a politician. Despite the fact that the Court Unit has been without a record-holder for over a month, a decision has been reached and according to Reforma Newspaper, the news will be shared with the PGR and Salinas within the next few hours.

The ruling puts an end to 19 years of criminal accusations against Carlos Salinas’s brother, Raúl, final and definitely absolving him of illegal enrichment estimated at approximately 224 million pesos (roughly $16.5MM) in the last file opened. Turns out the allegations presented in the PGR’s appeal, were insufficient to overturn the acquittal judge Carlos López Cruz dictated on June 19, 2013, which was ratified today.

The PGR’s assumption was that the enrichment most definitely came from the secret budgetary appropriation from Carlos Salinas’s presidency, during which 2 thousand 218 million pesos were “deviated” between 1990 and 1994, ordered by then Administration Director of Los Pinos, Ernesto Sentíes, who died in 1998. Nonetheless, the Attorney General’s Office was unable to prove their claims.

As previously mentioned, the Court Unit, has not had a record-holder for a month, as judge Martha del Carmen Hernández– former Assistant Attorney of Estado de México while Peña Nieto was Governor- was named Federal Judiciary. Instead of Hernández, Fermín Cotero, was left in charge of the Court, and according to the Federal Judicial Power, settled Raúl Salinas’s case and promptly left on vacation that same day.

Since his arrest in 1995, Salinas won every criminal process one by one; from the premeditated murder of José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, to laundering money, fiscal fraud, peculation, and finally illicit enrichment. Within this last criminal trial, the PGR accuses him of obtaining up to 49 properties in Mexico City, Estado de México, Guerrero, Morelos and other entities of the country, all of which were acquired with resources that highly surpass his salary as an official.

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