The Awkward Partner

Longtime acquaintances of lawyer Jesus Hernandez Alcocer are not surprised by what happened last Thursday at the famous Suntory restaurant in south-central Mexico City, where on Thursday night he settled a claim by his young wife, singer Yrma Lydya, and allegedly killed her with three bullets. Hernandez Alcocer’s presence in that restaurant was not surprising, nor unusual that he was armed. Almost every afternoon Hernández Alcocer dispatched on the ground floor of the restaurant, and always, he brought a gun hanging.
Hernández Alcocer has a network of high-level connections that goes back more than a decade, in politics – he has even financed at least one political party – in the Judiciary and in security, distinguished by the arrogant way in which he treated many people. His relationships are not only of the past, but of the present, being linked, institutionally and personally, with some of the most influential people and close to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The most important relationship, according to military sources, is his partnership with General Audomaro Martínez Zapata, director of the National Intelligence Center, a person so close and influential with the president for more than 25 years, that at his proposal he appointed his compadre, General Luis Cresencio Sandoval, Secretary of National Defense. despite being the penultimate general in the meritocratic echelon for the position. Their partnership, the sources said, is in the Sedregal company, focused on private security, although officially neither of them appears as part of the company.
Sedregal was incorporated in Querétaro on September 18, 2012 by his son Oscar Audomaro Martínez Hernández, Luis Arturo Oliver Navarro, who also comes from a military family, and two people about whom there is no public information available, Alejandra Janeth Arámbula Sánchez, who is listed as sole administrator, and Diana Yamilet Hernández Zárate. Martínez Hernández is listed as the executive general director.
There is not much public information available about the company, which had at least three contracts with the government from 2018 to 2020 with the Attorney General’s Office, before becoming Attorney General’s Office, with Liconsa and with the National Bank of the Army, Air Force and Navy. The company began to have contracts in the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, but it has been during that of López Obrador when it acquired a sustained strength that it had not had before.
The society in Sedregal is not transparent, but military and political sources point out that General Martínez Zapata is not the only military officer of rank in the founding of that company, and that at least there is one more who had positions of strategic importance in previous administrations, and who at some point was a candidate to be secretary. Hernández Alcocer’s relations within the Ministry of National Defense were something that the lawyer came to boast about for several years.
Within the opaque arming of Sedregal, it was transcended by comments of Hernández Alcocer himself over time, that among the people linked to the company are the son of an important businessman, owner of one of the large Mexican groups, who disappeared from the list of those attacked recurrent by President López Obrador in the mornings during the first months of the government. Although those who talked with Hernández Alcocer had the impression that the businessman’s son and the other person linked to the Puebla Group, names of the controversial former governor Mario Marín, very close to the lawyer, were partners of Sedregal, it is not clear that they are.
Hernández Alcocer’s relationship with the head of the government’s civilian intelligence apparatus is not the only one of high relevance of the lawyer. Judicial sources narrate of the closeness he has maintained with the Attorney General, Alejandro Gertz Manero, and with his right hand, the prosecutor specialized in Competition Control, Juan Ramos. According to two of the sources, Hernández Alcocer was a frequent visitor to their offices and they used to recommend talking to him to have direct access to Ramos, and indirectly through that route to Gertz Manero, to be able to deal with cases and seek a solution outside of court.
There are indications about alleged judicial benefits of Hernández Alcocer from that relationship, but no concrete data so far. It is also unclear whether the lawyer’s relationship with the prosecutor is old or arose from his relationship with the director of the National Intelligence Center. In any case, the links with three very important figures in the handling of the political persecution of the regime are variables that must be observed.be careful in the judicial process that will be carried out against the lawyer.
Hernández Alcocer was arrested last Thursday in the Suntory along with his escort, by the escort of a capital official. According to press reports, he tried to bribe the police of the Benito Juárez mayor’s office, where the restaurant is located, who arrived to support the escort who caught them while they tried to flee after the homicide. The Prosecutor’s Office of the capital opened a folder for the alleged crime of femicide, and on Saturday he was transferred to the North Prison.
The performance of the escort and the determination of the police not to be bribed, the prominence of the murdered, the activity of the singer Yrma Lydia and the place where the crime was committed, made it one of high impact and interest for the media, which reduces the spaces of maneuver so that his partners and friends can act easily to get him out of the problem. The last word is not said in this country where the influential weighs so much, and it will be seen in the coming weeks if they intervene for him or, as appropriate, that they allow justice to do its job.



Original source in Spanish