Emilio Lozoya Austin, former director of Pemex, will again seek to reach a reparatory agreement and obtain a criterion of opportunity for the Agronitrogenados and Odebrecht cases, which have kept him in preventive detention since November 3, 2021.
For this, a hearing is scheduled this Friday at the North Prison, in which the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) must define whether or not to grant the benefit of a reparatory agreement in criminal case 211/2019. In it, he is accused of allegedly receiving bribes exceeding 3.4 million dollars from executives of the company Altos Hornos de México, for the overpriced purchase of the Agronitrogenados plant.
In addition, a hearing is scheduled for Monday, November 7, to review criminal case 261/2019 on the Odebrecht case. In it, Lozoya is accused of the crimes of operations with resources of illicit origin, criminal association and bribery for receiving 10.5 million dollars in bribes from the Brazilian construction company.
Last April, the defense of the former official had already offered before the judge a provisional arrangement to suspend the criminal proceedings opened against Lozoya. The arrangement consisted of the payment of just over 10 million dollars with the guarantee of five homes of the family in between, in exchange for Lozoya regaining his freedom.
However, the agreement between Pemex and Lozoya fell apart at the last minute, after the legal representation of the state company said it was dissatisfied with the agreement. A day later, on April 13, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador himself acknowledged in his morning press conference that he was the one who gave the instruction to stop the arrangement and request that an audit be carried out to determine how much damage is caused to the public treasury derived from both cases.
Read: The agreement that collapsed in two hours: the chronicle of the failed agreement between Emilio Lozoya and Pemex
Now, if both legal benefits are achieved, the former director of Pemex will get the criminal proceedings opened against him suspended and, failing that, he will become a collaborating witness for the processes that are followed against various public figures involved in bribes to approve the energy reform of the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).
To comply with this agreement, Lozoya’s defense has advanced that he will insist on delivering various properties as collateral and will seek to withdraw the accusations against Lozoya’s mother, Mrs. Gilda Austin; his wife, Marielle Helene Eckes, and his sister, Gilda Susana Lozoya, involved in the criminal proceedings.
“We continue within the framework of the reparatory agreement and the criterion of opportunity,” said lawyer Miguel Ontiveros, Lozoya’s legal representative, consulted by Political Animal.
If he does not get the procedural benefits, the former official could still plead guilty to access an abbreviated process and thus pay a minimum prison sentence for both cases. Failing that, the judge can decree to move to the trial stage, in which the FGR has already announced that it will request a sentence of 39 years in prison for the Odebrecht case and 15 for Agronitrogenados, considering that Lozoya was the only beneficiary of both bribery schemes.
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