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On Friday, Argentine authorities and Interpol detained businessman Carlos Ahumada Kurtz who was at the center of a Mexican corruption scandal in 2004 that hurt the reputation of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who at the time was Mexico City’s mayor and is now the nation’s president .
The detained Argentine businessman Carlos Ahumada was filmed in 2004 giving bundles of money to Lopez Obrador’s main ally in the City Council, René Bejarano . Support for López Obrador at the time was battered by the graft scandal .
Ahumada was detained at the request of Mexican authorities and a process to extradite him to Mexico will begin immediately, the Mexican Attorney General’s Office (FGR) said in a statement.
The FGR said it suspects Ahumada of committing tax fraud of around MXN $1.47 million . In 2004, investigators wanted to question him over an alleged MXN $3 million in missing public funds .
The FGR said that the investigation was started in 2016 and was resumed by the current administration , achieving the pre-trial detention via Interpol.
Last Tuesday, the Tenth District “Amparo” Judge in Criminal Matters dismissed Ahumada’s "amparo" trial request against the FGR’s intention to proceed with two previous investigations in which he is accused of extortion, specific fraud, forgery and use of false documents . This decision allowed the FGR to continue the trial against Carlos Ahumada Kurtz.
The former secretary of the Social Development Ministry (Sedesol) and Sedatu , Rosario Robles Berlanga , claimed before the Ministry of the Interior that in August 2014, Carlos Ahumada tried to blackmail her.
According to Robles, Ahumada Kurtz took her signature from a blank document to involve her in an apocryphal promissory note with the date of August 1st, 2003 , with which he would force her to acknowledge a millionaire debt.
During the first years of the 21st century, Ahumada Kurtz was a prominent business figure. He had an important contact and political network , which allowed him to buy the soccer team Torreón Santos and to open the newspaper “El Independiente. ”
Nevertheless, everything changed after the video scandals in 2004 of which he was part along with René Bejarano, where he was recorded giving him money to support López Obrador’s campaign.
López Obrador, who took office in December, has made fighting corruption a cornerstone of his administration.
Thus, three of the main figures – Carlos Ahumada, Rosario Robles, and Juan Collado – pointed out for the recording and leakage of the so-called video-scandals of 2004 are arrested and in legal proceedings for different reasons.
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