The Spanish National Police confirmed the arrest of Mexican politician Humberto Moreira, former national leader of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and former governor of Coahuila, in the Barajas airport.
"Humberto Moreira was arrested in Barajas by order of the anticorruption prosecutor. He was placed at the disposition of the National Audience this afternoon #misióncumplida", reported the corporation in Twitter.
After the arrest of Moreira, his team reported to commentator Ciro Gómez Leyva on the Radio Formula station that he was detained on migratory issues.
A court spokesman confirmed Friday night that Moreira was being questioned. A judge ordered to have Moreira sent to prison, according to El Español newspaper.
The paper added that the Spanish authorities have been investigating Moreira for over a year, accused of money laundering,
embezzlement, conspiracy and bribery.
Moreira resigned in 2012 as party leader under a cloud of state government debt that accumulated under his governorship of Coahuila from 2005 to 2011. The debt was financed at least in part by falsified documents.
Moreira has not been charged in the U.S. or Mexico, but two of his top associates have pleaded guilty in federal court in San Antonio, Texas, to conspiring to transport stolen money.
In the plea agreement for businessman and media owner Roland González Treviño dated last April, Moreira appears unnamed as co-conspirator 1, "a high-ranking official in Coahuila" who won the governorship. The plea agreement said he started in January or February of 2006 "taking money for his own personal use from the government of Coahuila."
González admitted to participating in a plan to defraud or steal money from Coahuila with co-conspirator 1 and others. González also admits to transferring more than $US1.8 million that was "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" from the state of Coahuila and sent to the U.S.
Moreira's former state treasurer, Héctor Javier Villarreal Hernández, also pleaded guilty in 2014 in San Antonio to conspiracy to launder money and conspiring to transport stolen money.
Moreira left the governorship in 2011 to head the Institutional Revolutionary Party just as it was gearing up for a return to national power with candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, now the Mexican president. Moreira resigned when it was revealed that the Coahuila state debt rose from $US27 million to nearly $US3 billion during his tenure.
The PRI issued a statement Friday saying it had too little information to comment, adding that "institutions are not responsible for the actions of individual members."
