Rosario Robles is in prison as a precautionary measure against “risk of escape” because Judge Felipe de Jesús Delgadillo considered that there was no certainty about his residence. Although she argued that she had lived in the same house in Coyoacán for 24 years, the truth is that she had not lived there for at least three years, and even processed a driver’s license and registered an apartment in the Polanco colony as a domicile. That contradiction meant a “falsehood,” the judge said at the hearing on August 13, and was decisive in sending her to the Santa Martha prison.
The owner of the department that registered in this procedure is Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Secretary of Communications and Transport (SCT) during the management of President Enrique Peña Nieto. He bought it in cash at 9 million pesos in October 2014—almost two years after his cabinet appointment—according to the record of the public record obtained by Political Animal.
According to Ruiz Esparza, Rosario Robles lived in that apartment since September 2017, when the earthquake in Mexico City forced her to move from one where she lived in Reforma, which also contradicts what was said by the exfuncionaria, who had stated that he lived in the Los Reyes colony, in the coyoacán mayoralty. “There’s a way to check, everyone knows me, that’s where my daughter was born,” he said at the hearing before Judge Delgadillo Padierna.
It was a “chance” that Robles would get to live there, according to Ruiz Esparza. “She was looking for a place to live and I was renting the apartment,” she said.
“Wherever she lived, in Reforma, she came out when the tremor came because the tall building moved so much. He started looking and contacted the brokerage agency that I was running the department. He was interested in the apartment. She didn’t know it was mine, I didn’t know she was looking. At that moment I was pleased that a fellow cabinet wanted to rent it,” the former secretary said in an interview.
Ruiz Esparza said that the monthly rent paid by Robles amounted to 35 thousand pesos, but “for care of the legal process” of the former secretary, he preferred not to show the contract. She arrived at the property since 2017 and left him only in February of this year when the contract expired, she explained.
The apartment in Polanco measures 221.54 square meters, and could be quoted at more than 19 million pesos, since the square meter in the area is estimated at up to 88 thousand 600 pesos. Although the former official paid only 9 million 100 thousand pesos, and although the property is on his estate register, the cost is omitted, just like that of the other five departments he also owns.
Julio Hernández López, lawyer of Rosario Robles, said he was unaware of this information. “I didn’t research that department, we did see it for precautionary measures, they told me that I had occupied it for some time when it was in the Secretariat, but I have no greater data from the department.”
Coyoacan or Polanco?
At the hearing on August 13, when Judge Felipe de Jesús Delgadillo Padierna determined that Rosario Robles should serve a pre-trial detention in Santa Martha Acatitla and continue the investigation process, the discussion about his home was central.
According to a report by the National Center for Planning, Analysis and Information for Combating Crime (CENAPI), the body of the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic, Robles processed a driver’s license with a different address than the one registered for receive notifications, in the colony Los Reyes, in the Coyoacán Mayor.
Political Animal confirmed that the registered address for the license was the department located in Tennyson number 223, second floor, in Colonia Polanco, in the mayor’s Office Miguel Hidalgo, an area where the square meter is quoted at 88,600 pesos, according to real estate pages.
However, at the hearing, Rosario Robles tried to convince the judge that her residence was in Coyoacán. “I have lived in the same house for 24 years, I am a whole of the Coyoacan Kings, where my daughter was born. Everyone knows me,” he said, asking for the floor. While your defense filed receipts for services to prove it.
But the judge considered that “it is one thing to have that house and another to inhabit it.” In addition, she said, she did not even receive the subpoena to appear at the hearing because she was not found at the home of Los Reyes, nor a second chance when ministerial police men went to pick her up.
Her lawyers justified that on one occasion she was taking a course and on the second, she had gone on holiday, but the judge considered a “falsehood and lack of rooting,” so she would even have “easy to hide” even outside the country, given that had economic possibilities after being secretary of state.
The Department of Polanco
According to the minutes of the Public Register of Property of Mexico City, the department of Tennyson, owned by Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, has a total area of 221.54 square meters. According to the former official, it is a “small two-bedroom, one-bedroom apartment.”
The 9 million 100 thousand pesos were paid out in 2014, just two years after taking over the ownership of the Ministry of Communications and Transport because “I have been a public official for 50 years uninterrupted, in the Federal government and the government of the State of Mexico; from the Bank of Mexico to secretary of state.”
Even that property was part of the official’s estate statement on Declaranet, with the registration sheet 9432679, although the value of the latter is not reported, nor of the other five departments that Esparza also purchased from the count between 2013 and 2017.
According to real estate pages, the properties on that street are quoted at 88 thousand 600 thousand pesos per square meter and the department of Ruiz Esparza measures 221 meters, so it could currently be quoted in more than 19 million pesos.
“The apartments have gone up a lot in value, but that’s what was paid for by the department, it was notarized and was declared. I bought it as a public servant,” he insists in interview.
According to the file of the property, Ruiz Esparza intended to buy from June 26, 2014, as stated in the first “preventive notice of sale”. The second notice was recorded on 9 September and the transaction was completed on 29 October of the same year.
The seller of the property was Isidoro Dichi and Mohana and the transaction was credited to notary public number 163, Luis Octavio Hermoso y Colín, in Naucalpan, State of Mexico.
What we do in Animal Político requires professional journalists, teamwork, dialogue with readers and something very important: independence. You can help us keep going. Be part of the team.
Subscribe to Animal Politician, receive benefits and support free journalism.
#YoSoyAnimal
