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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
A federal judge in Mexico City has issued four new warrants for the arrest of Coahuila state officials involved in a massive bank loan scam, according to Mexican news reports.
Jaime Rene Jimenez Flores, Jorge Lopez Alarcon, Hector Javier Villarreal Hernandez and Sergio Ricardo Fuentes Flores are the four officials named in the warrants by the unidentified judge. Two of the disgraced public officials, Senors Jimenez Flores and Lopez Alarcón, are already in a federal prison in Distrito Federal waiting trial.
An arrest warrant was stayed by another federal judge earlier in favor of a fifth official, Juan Manuel Delgado. Apparently, the new detention orders were released to keep the two officials currently facing trial in prison, and to maintain warrants against the other two officials still at large, based on the legal reasoning for the stay in favor of Senor Manuel Delgado.
All five officials are facing charges under a federal law dating only to 2005 that forbids fraud in acquiring loans from any credit institution, even if the money will be or has been repaid. The acts that enabled the government of Coahuila state to amass the heaviest debt load per capita in Mexico are themselves relatively minor charges.
Villarreal Hernandez, head of the Coahuila state tax collection service, had earlier been charged in state court with falsifying documents. He spent a weekend in jail before he was released on bail. He was later caught attempting to board a private aircraft bound for Texas by Coahuila state ministerial police agents.
After Villareal Hernandez was re-apprehended he was released with the new bail conditions that he periodically check in with the local court in Saltillo, something he has to date never done.
Villarreal Hernandez has been on the run since the last time he was released. At first, speculation was he went to Cuba.
Last month Villarreal Hernandez was arrested on money laundering charges related to the discovery of USD $67,000 in cash in his possession in Smith County, Texas incident to a traffic stop by sheriff deputies. He spent a week in county jail before his USD $20,000 bail was posted. Villarreal Hernandez's wife, Maria Botella, two unidentified children and an unidentified passenger were also in the car with Villarreal Hernandez when he was arrested.
The Coahula public debt scandal was so massive that it cost the central figure in the state government at the time the loans were illegally acquired, Humberto Moreira Valdes, his job as president of the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) after only nine months in office, and an unexpectedly narrow electoral win in Michoacan state.
Despite being the head of state of Coahuila and having direct contact with at least one of the officials charges during the scandal, Moreira has always claimed his innocence in the scandal.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com