MADRID, SPAIN (Reuters) – Spanish police said on Wednesday May 29 that they arrested a Mexican national the day before, but that it was not the former chief of Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex, Emilio Lozoya, as they had previously stated.
A police spokeswoman declined to give the identity of the person arrested. A spokesman for the police had earlier told Reuters that Lozoya had been arrested.
The Mexican attorney general’s office has said that Alonso Ancira, the chairman of steelmaker Altos Hornos de Mexico was arrested in Spain on Tuesday May 28.
The Mexican Finance Ministry’s money-laundering czar Santiago Nieto said on Tuesday that the Financial Intelligence Unit he leads had presented the attorney general’s office with three charges against Lozoya related to “acts of corruption” committed when he was at the helm of Pemex.
Lozoya headed Pemex from 2012 to 2016 and ran former president Enrique Pena Nieto’s election campaign. He is wanted in Mexico for alleged bribery, tax fraud and other crimes.
The case reflects Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s pledge to root out entrenched corruption and would be the highest profile move since he took office on Dec. 1.
(Reporting by Paul Day and Emma Pinedo; Editing by Jose Elias Rodriguez and David Holmes)
REUTERS
