Former Social Development Minister Rosario Robles in a 2018 photo.Diego Simón Sánchez (Diego Simón Sánchez)
Rosario Robles was released this Friday after three years in preventive detention in the millionaire distractions case dubbed The Master Scam. The Secretary of Agricultural and Social Development during Enrique Peña Nieto’s tenure (2012-2018) has asked at least seven times to be able to defend herself at liberty since she was transferred to Santa Martha Acatitla prison in August 2019. The judge repeatedly refused this option due to the risk of absconding. Last Wednesday he tried again with the accusation of “various illnesses” and “age reasons”.
The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) then examined the health of 66-year-old Robles, examined the appropriate security measures to prevent him from evading the procedure and requested replacement of the preventive detention, as the institution announced. The control judge has granted the request and taken other precautionary measures, including prohibiting unauthorized departure from the country, handing over the passport to the prosecutor’s office and presenting it in court every 15 days.
The former leader of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) had already made some progress in her procedural situation in recent months. For example, he obtained an injunction to suspend the arrest warrant against him for organized crime and money laundering. The conspiracy she is involved in is particularly emblematic as her arrest was the first major milestone in the Fourth Transformation anti-corruption plan, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s political project. This program focused on the bad practices of the previous PRI and PAN administrations.
Rosario Robles being interviewed leaving Santa Martha Acatitla Prison on August 19, 2022.RR. HH
However, the investigation into La Estafa Maestra has been stalled for months, also due to delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and has gone through several script twists. The former secretary was negotiating with prosecutors and was faced with an offer to write the epilogue to the trial. During the early 2021 trial, Robles offered to plead partially guilty to a fraud total of more than $400 million embezzled. The aim was to reduce the sentence from 21 to six years. But suddenly the officer changed her mind and decided to go to court and defend her innocence.
The times and denials of justice, which had always concluded that there was a risk of absconding or that there was no statute of limitations on the crimes accused of Robles, led politicians to directly charge Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero with prosecution and López Obrador himself with the political revenge. “I became a hostage,” he wrote in a letter that his daughter Mariana Moguel read outside the gates of the National Palace last March. The President has always rejected the thesis that the case was politicized and limited its development solely to the decisions of the judiciary. “As for the executive branch, there is no revenge, we don’t do it, it’s immoral, it’s undignified, it deprives everyone of authority, and for us the most important thing is moral authority,” the president said.
Former secretary Epigmenio Mendieta’s lawyer has confirmed tonight that the visit of the President of the Nation’s Supreme Court, Arturo Zaldívar, to Santa Martha Acatitla prison in May was crucial for the case to be dropped. The minister then responded to inquiries from around 200 imprisoned women and encouraged a public debate on the use of preventive detention. Article 20 of the Constitution stipulates that this measure may in no case exceed a period of two years. Robles remained in prison for more than three years.
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