(Reuters) – Mexico will not investigate former president Felipe Calderon after one of his onetime aides was charged in the United States with accepting bribes from a drug cartel, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday.
At a regular government news briefing Lopez Obrador was asked if Mexico would probe Calderon following the arrest of ex-security minister Genaro Garcia Luna last week, or whether he would leave the matter in the hands of the United States.
“There won’t be an investigation because it would create the perception we’re doing it for political purposes,” said Lopez Obrador, a leftist who claimed he was robbed of the presidency in 2006 after a narrow loss to the conservative Calderon.
The president said the office of Mexico’s attorney general would cooperate with U.S. authorities in the investigations around Garcia Luna, who this week waived his right to a detention hearing in a Dallas federal court.
“And if they decide to open a case, it’s a decision of that independent authority,” Lopez Obrador said, apparently referring to Calderon, who was president until 2012.
Lopez Obrador said he believed it was better to look to the future rather than rake through the past. But he repeated that if the Mexican public demanded via referendum to go after ex-presidents, his administration would heed the call.
Garcia Luna, who was Calderon’s minister for public security from 2006 to 2012, has been accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel once headed by convicted kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Source: REUTERS
