Karime Macías disappeared last year after her husband Javier Duarte was arrested amid claims he stole millions from public

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Karime Macías’s husband was once one of Mexico’s most powerful men, but when he went missing in 2016 – amid accusations that he had pilfered millions of dollars of public funds – it seemed her life of Riley had come to an end.

Instead, she moved in down the road from the Queen.

That, at least, is what her husband’s successor as governor of Mexico’s Veracruz state claimed on Tuesday as he alleged that Macías was living a life of luxury in London.

“We cannot allow this,” Miguel Ángel Yunes growled as he presented the fruits of what he called a months-long surveillance campaign on the former first lady.

Until October 2016 – when her husband, Javier Duarte, was forced from office and went on the run in a government helicopter – Macías had reportedly enjoyed the use of a 15-acre, $9.7m ranch called El Faunito, where the walls were decorated with paintings by Latin American masters such as Rufino Tamayo and Fernando Botero.



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But after Duarte’s capture in Guatemala last April, Macías disappeared from view.

Duarte is currently awaiting trial on organised crime and money laundering charges in Mexico City’s Reclusorio Norte prison. In March, Duarte accused Yunes and the Mexican newspaper Reforma of violating his human rights and his right to a fair trial.

On Tuesday, Yunes claimed Macías had been an important player in Duarte’s alleged corruption racket, and argued that her detention would help recover millions of dollars of missing funds spirited overseas to places including Houston, Miami, New York and London.

CNN en Español reported that lawyers acting for Duarte had dismissed the legal campaign against him and his family as politically motivated. Macías’s lawyer told the channel that his client was happy to cooperate with Mexican authorities.

Little was publicly known about Macías’s whereabouts until this week, when Yunes claimed that she and her three children had moved into a luxury property in SW1, one of London’s most desirable postcodes.

At a specially organised press conference, Yunes said his team had tracked Macías to a redbrick block of luxury flats in Belgravia’s Wilbraham Place.

The website of the estate agent Savills shows a “superb” 156 sq metre four-bedroom flat at the property, which sold for a cool £3.6m in April 2017.

That, according to Mexican media reports, was the same month Macías arrived in London to start a new life – although it was not clear from Yunes’s claims whether she had been the buyer.

An eight-minute propaganda video, released by Yunes, revelled in Macías’s proximity to British royalty and power. “Queen Elizabeth of England lives 1km away in Buckingham Palace!” a narrator gasped as he described the location of her upmarket home.

“Prince Charles – the heir to the throne – lives 1.5km away in a palace known as Clarence House! Margaret Thatcher used to live 600m away!”

“Karime Macías’s residence,” the narrator continued, “is 40m from Sloane Square, one of the city’s two most exclusive shopping districts with jewellers like Cartier, Tiffany, Bulgari and boutiques belonging to the most expensive fashion designers like Chanel, Valentino, Hermès, Armani, Salvatore Ferragamo, Prada and others.”

In Yunes’s telling, Macías adopted mundane and extravagant habits in her new home.

Surveillance footage showed her clutching a plastic bag from Boots outside a branch of Marks & Spencer. She allegedly spent at least £60,000 a month, and attended a “face gym” in an attempt to strengthen her facial muscles.

Critics have accused Yunes of playing politics with the accusations in a bid to give his son the edge in the race to succeed him as governor when Mexico goes to the polls on 1 July.

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But the governor declared the revelations were evidence of his “frontal assault” on corruption.



“Nobody deserves abundance at the cost of the poverty of the people of Veracruz,” said Yunes, who called for the UK to extradite Macías immediately.

On Tuesday, Interpol reportedly issued a red notice for Macías’s arrest after a request from Mexican authorities.



Macías was reported to have applied for asylum in the UK last year, claiming she faced political persecution back home. An online petition urged British authorities to reject that request.



“Please, Home Office, do not take part in Mexico’s long-reigning impunity and help us make them face justice by denying them asylum,” it says.



