By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

Julio Scherer Ibarra, former legal advisor to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), accused Federal Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero and Senator and former Interior Secretary (SeGob) Olga Sánchez Cordero on Saturday, March 19, of plotting against him to “soil his name” with a dissemination of misinformation campaign.

In an interview published in the weekly political magazine Proceso, Scherer Ibarra said that he is being persecuted by the two, both of whom are close allies of AMLO.

Given the ongoing harassment he has suffered, Scherer said that he “has decided to tell the truth” about what has gone on within the López Obrador cabinet over the course of the last three years.

Scherer Ibarra attributed the misinformation assaults to “personal vendettas against him” arising from disagreements among the three within the López Obrador administration.

Specifically, Scherer Ibarra, who has been a focus of growing controversy related to alleged hidden assets and his now-infamous declaration that reporters in Mexico “should be silenced,” accused Gertz Manero and Sánchez Cordero of leaking rumors that linked him to an alleged extortion of high-profile lawyer Juan Collado Mocelo — the so-called advocate of the country’s former political elite — who is currently behind bars on accusations of money laundering.

“From their position of power, Sánchez Cordero and Gertz Manero took advantage of Juan Collado’s desperation to persecute me and invented a false extortion charge,” Scherer Ibarra told Proceso, a left-leaning magazine that was founded by his father.

Scherer Ibarra went on to say that Sánchez Cordero, since the start of AMLO’s six-year term in December 2018, was limited in her functions as secretary of the interior by order of the president.

“Sánchez Cordero couldn’t get past her disappointment (over having her hands tied), so she undertook an investigation into my person and my professional activities,” Scherer Ibarra said.

And while Scherer Ibarra said that while he had originally supported Gertz Manero to hold the office of the federal attorney general, Gertz Manero has since become embroiled in a series of mounting scandals that have damaged both his public image and credibility.

Scherer Ibarra also said that Gertz Manero blamed him for leaked information about him to the media.

As other differences arose between the two, Scherer Ibarra said that “a resentment that I could not imagine and from which there has been no turning back exploded vehemently.”

Scherer Ibarra likewise said the Gertz Manero had “asked me for just one favor, which I denied,” that is, to prevent Gertz Manero’s sister-in-law Laura Morán Servín and her daughter Alejandra Cuevas Morán from obtaining an injunction for the accusation of the murder of his brother Federico Gertz Manero.

Almost from the day he took office, Gertz Manero began a judicial campaign against his in-laws on charges of murder of his brother, who died at age 85 in 2015 of cardiac arrest related to a chronic and pre-existent heart failure condition while in Mexico City’s ABC Medical Center, according to an autopsy performed by government authorities.

In the meantime, Gertz Manero has expropriated all assets belonging to his brother’s family, worth millions of dollars.

“The attorney general asked me to do this, yes, knowing full well that it was an illegal act,” Scherer Ibarra said.

“Angry as he was, his face contorted, as proceeded in the claims (against his in-laws) for his own personal gain. His lips trembled, his hands trembled, his voice trembled.”

As of Sunday, March 20, Gertz Manero had not responded directly to Scherer Ibarra’s allegations, but for her part, Sánchez Cordero said that her actions within the administration have “always been governed by the principles of honesty” and that the assertions made by Scherer Ibarra were false.