Javier Duarte, former governor of Veracruz, pleaded guilty to charges of criminal association and money laundering

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A former Mexican state governor has pleaded guilty to charges of criminal association and money laundering, after presiding over an administration whose thuggery and excesses outraged the public – and eventually proved too embarrassing for his political allies.



Javier Duarte, 45, was accused of embezzling millions in state money, which he used to buy a string of artworks and luxury properties. During his 2010-2016 administration, the Gulf coast region of Veracruz became one of Mexico’s most dangerous, most censored and most indebted states.

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On Wednesday, he was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 58,890 pesos (£2,350). State authorities have seized properties and cash worth around $120m, but Duarte will not have to pay any damages, and could be freed in as little as three years, according to press reports.



During Duarte’s term of office, Veracruz was consumed by a string of atrocities as drug cartels battled for territory amid widespread allegations of official collusion with organized crime.

Thousands of people disappeared; hundreds of bodies were later found buried in a series of clandestine mass graves; at least 17 journalists were murdered.

As the violence escalated, Duarte appeared unmoved by the plight of victims’ families, and instead blamed reports of bloodshed on his political rivals.

“He was the worst governor in the history of Veracruz – and we’ve had bad governors,” said Noé Zavaleta, the Veracruz correspondent for the newsweekly Proceso.



Zavaleta’s predecessor, Regina Martínez, was murdered in 2012. In 2015, Zavaleta attended five funerals for murdered colleagues and said that for journalists, the period was like “living with a boot on your neck”.

Media workers were threatened, filmed and intimidated; at one point Duarte’s own security detail manhandled a photographer at an event to celebrate freedom of speech.

Allegations of graft dogged Duarte’s administration from the start, including revelations that the state health secretariat had given watered-down medicines to child cancer patients.



An exposé by the online news organisation Animal Politico and anti-graft group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity in 2016 showed how Duarte’s close collaborators embezzled billions of pesos of government money into shell companies.



Duarte’s relatively light prison sentence prompted anger in Veracruz.



“Once again the justice system is mocking society,” said Zavaleta. “Behind all this money laundering and illicit enrichment are dismantled hospitals in Veracruz, unpaid scholarships, pensioners who died because they couldn’t pay for their medicines, the 3,600 disappeared persons because we lived in a state of anarchy.”

“Duarte got off easily, without doubt,” said Luis Pérez de Acha, a lawyer in Mexico City. “In terms of prison and his wealth? Very easily.”

Shortly before his term was due to end in 2016, Duarte fled Veracruz in a government helicopter.

He was eventually detained in Guatemala in April 2017 and extradited to Mexico. Meanwhile, his wife, Karime Macías, has been accused of living a life of luxury in central London.

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Outgoing president Enrique Peña Nieto once hailed Duarte as part of a wave of young governors who would modernise Mexico and renew the venerable Institution Revolutionary party (PRI).

Instead, Duarte became a poster child for political corruption; the PRI, which for many years turned a blind eye to graft, eventually used Duarte’s arrest as proof that it was finally getting tough on wrongdoing

Peña Nieto, who leaves office 1 December with record-low approval ratings, abided Duarte’s excesses until the PRI suffered unprecedented defeats in June 2016 local ellections, losing control of several states including Veracruz, where the party wielded power for 87 years.

But Duarte remained true to his party allegiance to the bitter end: at his sentencing on Wednesday, he said: “I am still a soldier of the president; I am loyal to him.”



