Mexico Daily News, Jan 11, 2013

Posted by The Generals on January 13, 2013, 9:28 am
187.146.119.22

Subject: Mexico News DAILY January 11, 2013 Mexico Wal-Mart offers Peña Nieto an opportunity Development: On 9 January the Mexican media reported that the US congressional investigations into the Wal-Mart de México bribery scandal appear to implicate Morelos Governor Graco Ramírez and the director of the national anthropological institute (Inah), Sergio Raúl Arroyo. Significance: In his campaign for the July 2012 elections, President Enrique Peña Nieto pledged to address corruption. Since assuming the presidency last month, Peña Nieto has moved fast and congress has already approved the creation of a new national anti-corruption commission and an overhaul of the security apparatus. Governor Ramírez is one of the founding members of the opposition Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). Some PRD factions still question the legitimacy of Peña Nieto’s electoral victory (although all of Mexico’s governors have pledged support for Peña Nieto). Key points: • According to US media reports, the two US Representatives in charge of the US Congressional investigation into the case, Elijah E. Cummings (D) and Henry A. Waxman (D), have sent a letter to Wal-Mart chief executive, Michael T. Duke, informing him that they have evidence that he and other high ranking Wal-Mart executives were aware of the fact that the Mexican subsidiary had paid bribes (in October 2005) to secure a building permit for a superstore near the San Juan de Teotihuacán anthropological site, a historical and protected environmental area 48km north of Mexico City. • The Mexican press reportedly has seen some of this evidence in the form of company emails and reports that they mention the payment of “contributions” to expedite the permit to an influential PRD congressmen, identified as Ramírez. Ramírez, who is also identified as the main contact for the negotiations between Wal-Mart and the PRD-run Mexico City government, has denied receiving bribes from Wal-Mart. • The emails also mention further contributions to federal government officials. The local press has pointed to Arroyo, as the Teotihuacán site falls under the Inah’s remit. Arroyo headed up the Inah between 2000 and 2005, when he was suddenly replaced by the Felipe Calderón administration (2006-2012). • Problematically for Peña Nieto, on 9 December Arroyo was re-named Inah director by the new education minister, Emilio Chuayffett, a stalwart of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Although Mexico’s attorney general’s office (PGR) has launched its own investigation into the Wal-Mart case, to date the PGR has not commented on the recent press revelations. Archive

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