The administration scrambled Monday to respond to growing questions about the family’s multi-million-dollar mansion owned by a government contractor, even as it tried to calm continuing protests over the probable murder of 43 students.
The president has tried to shift Mexico’s focus away from a bloody fight against organized crime to a series of political and economic reforms his administration successfully pushed through congress.
But as he attended a summit in China on Monday, Pena Nieto’s aides were trying the quell doubts about what the administration called his wife’s 2012 purchase of a $7 million mansion from a company that had won extensive contracts from the State of Mexico while Pena Nieto was governor. According to a story published Sunday by Aristegui Noticias, the house was built and is still owned by a company belonging to Grupo Higa, which also owns a firm that was part of a consortium awarded a $3.7 billion high-speed rail project this year.
Three days before the Aristegui story was published, Pena Nieto abruptly cancelled the contract, and the government announced it would take new bids in the interest of transparency.
Presidential spokesman Eduardo Sanchez denied there was anything improper about the company making a loan to first lady Angelica Rivera so she could buy the house, saying she had money from her former career as an actress.
Sanchez said the property borders Rivera’s existing home. “She needed to expand her house, she bought out her neighbor, regardless of who that neighbor was,” Sanchez said.
But according to the Aristegui article, it wasn’t a random purchase of a neighbor’s property to expand. Rivera and Pena Nieto worked extensively with the architect, Miguel Angel Aragones, to build the home to their specifications.
Sanchez’s explanation was met with much skepticism.
“It opens up a lot of questions. … If she needed a loan to buy a house, why didn’t she go to a bank?” said Mexico City-based security analyst Alejandro Hope. “When they realized it was a big government contractor, didn’t that set off an alarm bell … that a transaction like that might represent a conflict of interest?”
Meanwhile, officials were still trying to respond to public horror at the disappearance of 43 teachers and college students at the hands of a city police force on Sept. 26.
On Friday, officials said members of a drug gang based in Guerrero — the state where Acapulco is located — had confessed to killing the students and burning their bodies, leaving only charred fragments of bones and teeth.
But supporters of the missing students, refusing to believe they are dead,
battled federal police Monday in Acapulco, then blocked roads leading to the Pacific resort’s airport, forcing tourists to trudge for a half-mile to the terminal.
Pena Nieto’s predecessors spent much of their terms lurching from one scandal to another, and the country’s outbursts of violence threaten to erase the president’s efforts to convince the world that Mexico has put the worst behind it.
“I think we are going through some difficult moments,” Sanchez said. “I am sure we’ll get through this, and that something positive has to come out of this all.”
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