Home NewsCrime Andorra seizes 76.5 million euros to Peña Nieto’s lawyer, Juan Collado

Andorra seizes 76.5 million euros to Peña Nieto’s lawyer, Juan Collado

by Yucatan Times
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The justice system of the European country Andorra, ordered to seize 76.5 million euros (83.1 million US dollars) from Juan Ramón Collado – who is the lawyer of former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and PEMEX Union leader Carlos Romero Deschamps – and is currently imprisoned in Mexico, and is also under investigation a this Pyrenean country, as a suspect of illicit association and money laundering, according to Spanishe major newspaper El País.

“The alarm was activated in Andorra, after the lawyer transferred 10.5 million euros (11.6 million US dollars) from a bank in that country to a BBVA account in Madrid, six days before being arrested in Mexico (Collado was arrested in Mexico City on July 9),” says El País.

“The fortune of this lawyer, deposited in the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), was “frozen” along with that of  other of his clients back in March 2015, when this financial institution was closed due to alleged irregularities. Subsequently, the Andorran judge Canòlic Mingorance seized Collado’s funds for an alleged crime of money laundering, ” states El País.

“The Andorran investigation was provisionally filed in 2018 after the Mexican Prosecutor’s Office, (still during the Peña Nieto administration), sent a report to Andorrran judge Mingorance, in which Collado was exculpated. Back then, the representative of the Mexican Public Ministry Anahí Marcela Mendoza, argued that a person cannot be convicted of laundering without demonstrating the illicit origin of the money.

But after Collado’s detention in Mexico for money laundering, the case turned around and the investigation in Andorra was reactivated.

“On July 31, the Andorran Prosecutor’s Office requested the reopening of the proceedings and the immediate embargo of the 76.5 million euros, that were deposited in the Vallbanc bank on behalf of four Dutch instrumental companies allegedly represented by the Mexican lawyer.

The Andorra prosecutor’s brief explains it this way: “This situation involves renewing a logical and reasonable suspicion that the assets deposited in Andorra on behalf of Juan Collado or the companies he represents, have a criminal origin. There is a risk that these assets will be transferred abroad before the facts are clarified.”

What was even more suspicious for the the European’s country authorities, was the fact that on July 3 (six days before his arrest in Mexico), Collado transferred 10.5 million euros from Andorra to a BBVA account in Madrid, Spain, and other assets could be transferred in the same way, if urgent measures were not taken immediately.

It is important to highlight that, in this case it is not the AMLO administration who detected the irregularities, nor the one that is seizing the assets, but the government of the Principality of Andorra.

The Yucatan Times Newsroom

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