ACAPULCO, Mexico – President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government, which had seen smooth sailing through its first year and a half in office, is suddenly listing in the face of multiple crises.
The administration scrambled Monday to respond to growing questions about the family’s multi-million-dollar mansion owned by a government contractor, even as it tried to calm continuing protests over the disappearance – and probable murder – of 43 students.
The president has tried to shift Mexico’s focus away from a bloody fight against organized crime to a series of political and economic reforms his administration successfully pushed through congress.
But as he attended a summit in China on Monday, Peña Nieto’s aides were trying the quell doubts about what the administration called his wife’s 2012 purchase of a $7 million mansion from a company that had won extensive contracts from the State of Mexico while Enrique Peña Nieto was governor. According to a story published Sunday by Aristegui Noticias, the house was built and is still owned by Ingenieria Inmobiliaria del Centro, a company belonging to Grupo Higa.
Grupo Higa also owns a company that was part of the Chinese-led consortium awarded a $3.7 billion high-speed rail project this year. The consortium was the only bidder. All other competitors bowed out, saying they had been given only two months to put together an offer on the extremely complex project.
But three days before the story was published, Peña Nieto abruptly cancelled the contract, and the government announced it would take new bids in the interest of transparency.
Presidential spokesman Eduardo Sanchez denied there was anything improper about the housing deal in which the company granted first lady Angelica Rivera a loan to buy the mansion, saying she had money from her former career as an actress.
Sanchez said the property borders Rivera’s existing home. “She needed to expand her house, she bought out her neighbor, regardless of who that neighbor was,” Sanchez said. “Why is she to blame for being the wife of the president, being successful, having savings and, forgive the expression, spending it anyway she wants?”
But according to the Aristegui article, it wasn’t a random purchase of a neighbor’s property to expand. Rivera and Peña Nieto worked extensively with the architect, Miguel Angel Aragones, to build the home to their specifications. The plans posted on the website archdaily.com are dated October 2010 and the home is listed as being completed in 2011.
Sanchez’s explanation was met with much skepticism.
According to the Aristegui article, Grupo Higa and its affiliates won more than $600 million in construction projects in the State of Mexico, which borders Mexico City, while Peña Nieto was governor.
It said an air-charter service owned by Grupo Higa ferried Peña Nieto during his 2012 presidential campaign, while another Grupo Higa company printed campaign materials.
“It opens up a lot of questions ... If she needed a loan to buy a house, why didn’t she go to a bank?” said Mexico City-based security analyst Alejandro Hope. “When they realized it was a big government contractor, didn’t that set off an alarm bell ... that a transaction like that might represent a conflict of interest?”
