Abel Barajas / Reform Agency
Wednesday, February 22, 2023 | 20:53
Mexico City.- The company Odebrecht Ingeniería y Construcción Internacional will pay a fine of 543 million pesos and will remain disqualified for three years, for lying in one of the contracts that Pemex Refinación awarded it directly in the past six-year term.
Unanimously, the ministers of the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) today rejected the appeal for review presented by the Brazilian construction company against the administrative sanction.
In April 2019, the Ministry of Public Administration (SFP) imposed this disqualification and fine on the Odebrecht subsidiary, for providing false information in the contract to build accesses and external works for the project for the use of residuals at the Tula Refinery. awarded in 2015 for one thousand 811 million pesos.
The Brazilian construction company declared that it had all the necessary permits and authorizations for the work, however, it did not yet have the registration as a generator of hazardous waste before the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), since it requested it until 25 May 2017.
This is one of the contracts that Odebrecht allegedly obtained in Mexico through the alleged payment of bribes to Emilio Lozoya, former director of Pemex, for a sum of 10.5 million dollars.
The company filed an annulment lawsuit against the sanction before the Federal Court of Administrative Justice, but last July its Superior Chamber unanimously ratified the disqualification and the fine, considering that they are duly founded and motivated.
Broadly speaking, the court said that the sanction was based on the Federal Anti-Corruption Law in Public Procurement, a regulation that was only in force for four years.
Against this resolution, Odebrecht filed a direct amparo, but it was denied by the Twenty-Third Collegiate Court for Administrative Matters, noting that there was no legal defect or violation of the rights of the complainant.
The decision of the collegiate is the one that the Brazilian company challenged through the review appeal that this Wednesday the Second Chamber decided to reject.
Two other administrative sanctions were imposed on the Brazilian construction company and its subsidiaries at the time.
Last June it was announced that a court annulled a fine of 1.88 million pesos against Odebrecht in Mexico, concluding that the SFP did not prove that the company evaded or simulated compliance with requirements in another of the works contracts of the Tula refinery.
Another of the sanctions that is being disputed is a disqualification for three years, without a fine, which was also imposed in April 2019 on the subsidiary Constructora Norberto Odebrecht.
