translated from Spanish: UIF links Cowhead to sanctioned Odebrecht partner

The Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) accused the governor of Tamaulipas, Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca, of doing business with the Spanish company Acciona Energía, a partner of Odebrecht who has been blinded and sanctioned for having committed acts of corruption in countries of Latin America and Europe.
The indictment notes that a Mexican company linked to the panist representative, Enerxiza Wind, partnered with Acciona Energía to, advantageously, win in 2016 the tender for the construction and operation of the El Cortijo wind farm, which generates clean energy and then sells it to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
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The award took place in September 2016, a month before Cabeza de Vaca assumed the bernatura of Tamaulipas. However, according to the FIU, negotiations aimed at winning the wind business began some time earlier, as part of the adoption of the Energy Reform, when the panista was serving as senator from the Republic.
According to the investigation, Cabeza de Vaca holds a stake in Enerxiza Wind through an alleged group identified as Baltazar Higinio Reséndez Cantú, who serves as a shareholder in the company.
Reséndez Cantú is an entrepreneur of Tamaulipeco origin who, according to the Ministry of Finance, was signed by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) -the US FIU – for money laundering.
The indictment is part of the information provided by the UIF to the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic (FGR) to support the request for disafphase of Governor Cabeza de Vaca, who is identified from organized crime, operations with resources of illicit origin and tax fraud.
The governor’s name of the
In 2012, before winning the contract, the company Enerxiza Wind, in collaboration with the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas (UAT), promoted the installation of an anemometric tower to do wind studies, in order to determine the feasibility of building a park in the community of El Cortijo.
The feasibility certification of the work came a year later, which determined construction and declared an Open Season for bidders to submit their proposals.
Enerxiza Wind not only managed to make the project viable, but also won the tender for its construction in partnership with Acciona. Currently, the wind farm is fully operated by the Spanish company.
Enerxiza Wind’s ties to the Tamaulipeco governor not only lead to his alleged lenders – Reséndez Cantú. According to the UIF’s indictment, the company points to its tax domicile in the Ejido de La Retama, in Reynosa, where it shares headquarters with another company of the Cabeza de Vaca family, whose name was not indicated.
“From the information obtained, it is known that one of Francisco ‘N’s family businesses’ acquired virtually all of the Ejido de La Retama,” he says.
Entrepreneur Reséndez Cantú is a central part of the indictment against Cabeza de Vaca for operations with resources of illicit origin, the basis for the application of his deafness.
According to the UIF, the alleged lender is also a shareholder in the companies that participated in the corruption scheme used to “buy” a 42.1 million peso department from the governor in Santa Fe in 2019, 300% higher than the price at which the panista acquired it three years earlier.
Read more: ‘Federal government seeks to destabilize Tamaulipas,’ Cowhead says in government report
Business with an awkward partner
The El Cortijo project is the fifth wind farm operated by Acciona in Mexico and was completed in September 2018. It is a 168 megawatt (MW) power facility and has meant an investment of $235 million.
Acciona Energía signed a contract with the CFE to sell it, for 20 years, clean energy (CELs) produced in El Cortijo.
Such contracts have been challenged by the current administration, which charges high costs to the era. The Federation’s Superior Audit (ASF) revealed that in 2016 the CFE lost 1 billion pesos to buy renewable energy more from private suppliers.
Spain’s Acciona is under investigation by ecuador’s Public Prosecutor’s Office for suspected corruption in a contract she won in consortium with Odebrecht in 2015 to build a Quito Metro stretch of $500 million. In turn, the Colombian Public Prosecutor’s Office investigates both firms for allegedly simulating competition in a tender in that country.
In 2019, the World Bank vetoed for two and a half years an infrastructure subsidiary in AccionBolivia for committing irregularities in an offer and lying about the progress of a work. And in Europe, Spanish justice has fined and imprisoned former company directors and former officials for a corruption scandal related to public works in the autonomous community of Aragon.
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Original source in Spanish

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