Because the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) challenged the exclusion of financial evidence in the intermediate stage, a federal judge suspended the opening of the oral trial against the former director of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya Austin, and his mother, Gilda Margarita Austin and Solís, prosecuted for the bribery case of the Brazilian construction company Odrebecht.
Two weeks ago, the Control Judge of the North Prison, Gerardo Alarcón López, declared the oral trial open, after admitting test data from the FGR and Lozoya’s defense in the intermediate hearing.
However, the Attorney General’s Office was dissatisfied with the annulment of his financial evidence against Lozoya Austin, for which reason he appealed the decision, which has the immediate effect of suspending the order to open the trial.
The challenge also halts for the moment the signing of the reparation agreement between Emilio Lozoya Austin and Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), until the Collegiate Court of Appeals in Criminal Matters revokes the suspension of the trial ordered by Gerardo Alarcón López, Control Judge of the North Prison.
According to judicial sources, the Attorney General of the Republic filed the appeal before the expiration of the five days that the control judge had to report his determination to a Prosecution Court, so that it could set a date for the oral trial.
In the intermediate stage of the process, the former director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Emilio Lozoya Austin, and his lawyers managed to get Control Judge Gerardo Alarcón López to reject three decisive financial tests with which the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) seeks take it to the trial stage, in the Odrebecht case.
Alarcón López invalidated the financial information that the Swiss government delivered to the FGR to verify the bribes of the Brazilian construction company Odrebecht to Lozoya Austin, considering that it violates banking secrecy in Mexico.
For the same reason, the federal judge declared illegal the receipts on the transfers that shell companies linked to Odrebecht made to the company Latin America Capital Holdings, owned by the former director of Pemex, in which millions of dollars were deposited.
Likewise, documentation related to the reparation agreement reached by the Odebrecht company in the United States was excluded as evidence.