Abel Barajas/ Reform Agency
Tuesday, January 17, 2023 | 06:48
In a hearing that is scheduled for this Tuesday, the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) will try for the third time to accuse Emilio Lozoya for the Odebrecht Case, a file in which he already asked to impose 46 and a half years in prison.
The former director of Pemex will appear today at 10:00 am before Judge Gerardo Genaro Alarcón López, of the Federal Criminal Justice Center of the North Prison, for the intermediate hearing on this matter.
In this procedure, it is expected that the Prosecutor’s Office verbally accuses Lozoya and asks to impose the penalty on him; In addition, the parties will discuss their data and means of proof -a total of 67 from the FGR and 38 from the defense- in order to determine their legality and relevance to take them to trial.
As has happened with the Odebrecht Case, this will be the third time that an attempt is made to carry out the intermediate hearing. The previous two, held in April and November, have been postponed for various reasons.
The first, because the defense said that it was continuing in its process of negotiating an opportunity criterion to become a collaborating witness for the FGR and get out of prison.
The second, arguing that he had not yet obtained two expert opinions or access to the videotaped interrogations of the Odebrecht executives who accuse him of receiving bribes.
If held, the hearing will take place one year after the FGR presented its written accusation at the justice center.
It is probable that the defendant requests to postpone the proceeding, since on January 3 he did so in the process of the Agronitrogenados Case and the judge scheduled it again for next February 16.
For this matter, the Prosecutor’s Office asked to impose Lozoya 46 years with 6 months in prison, for the crimes of criminal association, bribery and money laundering.
He also requested to sentence him to a 14-year disqualification from holding public office, the payment of damage reparation of 6 million 385 thousand dollars and a fine of 7 thousand 950 days, equivalent to 87 million 252 thousand 442 pesos.
In the same file, the FGR asked to impose on Gilda Margarita Austin y Solís, mother of the former official, a 21-year sentence with 3 months in prison and the payment of a 4,050-day fine, which in this case is 262,278 pesos. .
In the hearings that have been postponed, Lozoya’s defense has stated that he is still in talks with federal authorities to negotiate the criteria of opportunity and the reparation agreement in his processes for the Odebrecht and Agronitrogenados Cases.
However, also in these proceedings, Pemex’s legal representatives have repeatedly said that there is no agreement with the defendant’s defense.
In March of last year, Pemex had already accepted a damage reparation of 10.7 million dollars, of which 7 million 385 thousand correspond to the Odebrecht file and 3.4 million to the Agronitrogenados file.
However, when Pemex had to validate that agreement before the control judge, President Andrés López Obrador rejected that amount because he estimated that it was less than the damage caused, which is why the hearings in which the conditional suspension of operations was to be granted were cancelled. the processes, which thwarted Lozoya’s freedom.
