Abel Barajas/Reform Agency
Saturday, March 18, 2023 | 08:39
Mexico City.- Although Carlos Antonio Dávila, former director of Legal Affairs at Segalmex, recovered 500 million pesos and wrote the complaint of the alleged fraudulent purchase of sugar from a “front” company, he ended up in the maximum security prison in the Altiplano with that same complaint.
The 74-year-old man with 50 years of experience in public service ordered the complaints for the simulated purchase of 7,840 tons of sugar for 142 million pesos, and the illegal purchase of stock securities, in addition to filing civil lawsuits. for breach of contract and took steps that achieved compensation of 500 million pesos to Segalmex.
Against René Gavira Segreste, former head of the Agency’s Administration and Finance Unit, he filed 10 complaints. Two processes resulted from them: One for authorizing in Liconsa the illegal purchase of 700 million pesos in stock market titles, between 2019 and 2020, and another for an acquisition of 100 thousand stock market titles with a total value of 100 million pesos with resources from Segalmex.
In addition, he prepared the complaint from which the 22 arrest warrants in the case were derived. This complaint was filed on August 25, 2021 with the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) by Maria Eugenia Oceguera Valle, to whom Dávila extended a power of attorney to represent Diconsa.
The complaint was originally filed against Gavira Segreste and José Francisco Pagaza López, representative of Servicios Integrales Carregin, the alleged supplier of sugar.
Dávila also instructed Diconsa to file a civil lawsuit against Carregin for breach of contract, under the assumption that he delivered only 3,110 tons of sugar and did not return a little more than 87 million pesos that they claimed.
Despite his contribution to the case, on March 10, a group of Federal Ministerial Police agents broke into his house with a search warrant and took him to Almoloya de Juárez, based on an arrest warrant for organized crime.
It was not until he was in front of the judge that he realized that the case for which he was being held was one of several that he had denounced, that of the simulated purchase of sugar. Thanks to the fact that he did not sign a document that the Attorney General of the Republic affirmed that he had signed – the only evidence against him – on Thursday morning a federal judge ordered his release and at night he left the Altiplano.
At the hearing in which the judge decided not to link him to the process, his lawyers José Lafontaine Hamui and José Luis Romero presented their case. “My client managed to get close to 500 million pesos restitution to the institution, did my client manage it?” At what point did the Financial Intelligence Unit say ‘I found you an account or business’? There isn’t, he is a man who has given his life for Mexico and it was brutal for a 74-year-old man to have the Police enter his home with a search warrant,” Lafontaine said at the stagecoach.
“The Prosecutor’s Office is right, there is a criminal organization behind this, but my client is not part of it, here the Prosecutor’s Office told the story backwards.”
The FGR went against Dávila because he was supposedly in charge of supervising the registration of Servicios Integrales Carregin in the list of providers.
That was the only evidence with which they tried to charge him as a member of a criminal organization.
Prosecutors assured that on April 16, 2020, he signed the registration document, however, at the hearing it was clarified that the former Legal Director did not sign that document.
“My client did not sign that document, it is false that he endorsed a front company out of procedure, the signature is not from Carlos Antonio Dávila Amerena but from Rogelio Elizalde Menchaca (Diconsa’s Litigation Manager). The FGR failed to do its duty loyalty,” said José Luis Romero Díaz, another of the lawyers.
At midnight on Thursday, 18 hours after his release was ordered, Dávila left the Altiplano.
