Alejandro Moreno, president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Photo: Google

By MARK LORENZANA

Alejandro Moreno, current president of Mexico’s centralist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), declared a value of 5.3 million pesos for 15 real estate properties that he acquired between 2012 and 2015, but the total value of those properties actually amounted to 103 million pesos.

According to Mexico’s Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) and the Campeche Prosecutor’s Office, Moreno actually acquired an additional 23 properties — aside from the 15, which the PRI president originally declared — which has brought the total estimated value of his properties to 103 million pesos. The FGR and the prosecutor’s office conducted two separate investigations into Moreno’s assets.

In 2019, former Governor of Oaxaca Ulises Ruiz reported Moreno to the FGR for allegedly lying in his declaration of assets about the cost of his properties in the southeast Mexican state of Campeche.

In June 14 of this year, the FGR office in Campeche also officially opened an investigation against Moreno for the crimes of Illicit enrichment, tax fraud and money laundering. It was in this second investigation that the 23 additional properties came to light. According to the Campeche FGR, some of the properties were under the name of Moreno’s relatives.

Moreno’s main residence in Campeche was searched on the morning of Monday, July 4, by elements of the FGR, led by Prosecutor Renato Sales Heredia. The mansion had a football field, swimming pools, several bars, pool tables and even a bowling alley, said Sales Heredia.

In his daily morning press conference on Wednesday, July 6, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) expressed his disapproval at the way the FGR searched Moreno’s home, after photographs of the search surfaced showing elements of the FGR forcing open the main door of the mansion and even rooms and bathrooms.

“The way they entered the house of the PRI president, I don’t agree with what they did. You cannot violate, humiliate the dignity of a person,” López Obrador said.

For his part, Sales Heredia said that everything was done in accordance with the law, and that nobody’s rights were violated.

“No one’s rights or dignity were violated. We had a search warrant. The search was authorized by a judge,” Sales Heredia said.

Shortly after the FGR announced its investigation against Moreno in June, a group of former presidents of the PRI called for Moreno’s resignation, which the group said was prompted by “a lack of results” — specifically the centralist party’s widespread defeat in the June 5 gubernatorial elections.

Moreno rejected the call for him to step down from his post as president of the PRI, and said that he would do so at the end of his term, on Aug. 19, 2023.