Political Ally of Mexican President Embroiled in ScandalMEXICO CITY — Mexico’s interior minister, a rising political star seen as President Felipe Calderón’s right-hand man, has become embroiled in a scandal over influence-peddling that threatens to sink his career and hobble Mr. Calderón’s efforts to push important laws through Congress.
The interior minister, Juan Camilo Mouriño, has been accused of steering lucrative contracts with the state oil monopoly to his family trucking business when he was the chairman of the energy committee in the lower house of Congress and, later, an assistant secretary of energy. Part of that time, he served as an assistant to Mr. Calderón, who was the energy minister.
Though he has denied any wrongdoing, the allegations seem to have tarnished Mr. Mouriño’s once-unblemished reputation. Congress and the attorney general have begun investigations into the contracts.
Earlier this week, Mr. Mouriño held a lengthy news conference to defend himself and called the charges baseless and politically motivated. “I never intervened, as a public servant, in any act that would represent an economic benefit to me or my family,” he said.
Regardless of their veracity, the fact that the charges have scandalized Mexico represented a new development in its democracy. Conflicts of interest were so commonplace under the one-party system that ruled Mexico until an opposition leader, Vicente Fox, won the presidency in 2000, that they hardly raised an eyebrow. Now, it appears that even an appearance of a conflict can cripple a public official.
Questions about the propriety of the contracts originally came from Mr. Calderón’s political nemesis, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a populist opposition leader and a former mayor of Mexico City. Mr. López Obrador narrowly lost the presidential election in 2006 to Mr. Calderón after an ugly campaign. He has never conceded defeat and claims to be “the legitimate president.”
Mr. López Obrador and his allies in Congress have carefully orchestrated the offensive against Mr. Mouriño, who also had served as Mr. Calderón’s campaign manager. They leaked copies of the contracts to newspapers and called for an investigation.
“This official is a trafficker in influence,” Mr. López Obrador charged when he made the first contracts public on Feb. 24.
The political broadside appears to be payback for the role Mr. Mouriño played as an architect of the negative advertising that doomed Mr. López Obrador’s bid for the presidency.
Yet it also comes just as the president is trying to push an energy reform bill through Congress. Mr. López Obrador and other leftists oppose it because it would allow some private investment in the state oil monopoly, known as Pemex.
The accusations involve seven contracts between Pemex and a trucking company belonging to Mr. Mouriño’s family between December 2000 and December 2003. Acting as a lawyer for his family business, Mr. Mouriño signed all the contracts, even though during most of that period he held public offices with direct oversight of Pemex.
Between September 2000 and October 2003, he was the chairman of the energy committee in the House of Deputies, a powerful position. Then he joined the Energy Ministry, eventually rising to become an assistant secretary under Mr. Calderón, a post he held until 2005.
For his part, Mr. Mouriño insists he followed the letter of the law, since neither the congressional committee nor the Energy Ministry had control over decisions that Pemex officials made about contracts. He points out that his family business has had contracts with Pemex for 22 years and that the terms did not change when he became a public official.
So far, President Calderón has stood by him, as have other governors and elected officials in the center-right National Action Party.
But Mr. Mouriño has taken a beating from leftists. Mr. López Obrador has made headlines by challenging him to public debates about the contracts. Members of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution have been calling for his resignation. They have even refused to join the congressional committee formed to investigate Mr. Mouriño, saying it was set up only to exonerate him.
“We decided not to participate in a subordinate way in a committee when we know where it’s going,” said the party’s leader in the House of Deputies, Javier González Garza.
Por esto y mucho mas es un honor estar con Obrador y luchar por la nación.
