MEXICO CITY (AP) — The former head of Mexico’s state oil company was arrested Wednesday in Spain on a international warrant issued by Mexico, authorities said.
Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero told Radio Formula that Emilio Lozoya was arrested in the southern port city of Malaga and that the goal was his extradition to Mexico.
Lozoya was director of Pemex between 2012 and 2016 during the administration of former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Mexico issued international arrest warrants for Lozoya last year as a result of corruption investigations, including into his alleged ties to Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction company that secured contracts across Latin America through a network of bribes.
Officials are also investigating Pemex’s purchase of a fertilizer plant in 2015 at an allegedly inflated price.
Lozoya has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Gertz said that prosecutors had been pursuing multiple investigations against Lozoya for months. He called it an “iconic case” that was nearly a year in the making with authorities across Europe.
After Gertz confirmed the arrest, Lozoya’s lawyer in Mexico, Javier Coello Trejo, said that the news “hit me like a bucket of cold water.”
He told Radio Formula that Lozoya was convinced the investigation was baseless and was open to turning himself in. He said he hadn’t yet spoken to his client since the arrest.
In late 2016, Odebrecht, reached an agreement with American, Brazilian and Swiss justice officials to pay millions of dollars in penalties. As part of that accord, Odebrecht divulged details of bribes across several countries. It said it paid $10.5 million to officials at Pemex between 2010 and 2014. Lozoya has denied taking bribes.
The scandal grew in late 2017 when a series of videos of statements of former Odebrecht executives were released, including its former Mexico director, Luis de Meneses. They directly implicated Lozoya, who in 2012 had been a key member of Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign.
While the Odebrecht revelations led to a wave of corruption investigations and arrests across Latin America, there had been no arrests in Mexico.
Mexican authorities declared in May 2019 that Lozoya could not hold public positions for 10 years and later the government froze Lozoya’s bank accounts.
Meanwhile, Spanish police arrested Alonso Ancira Elizondo, then-president of Altos Hornos de México also in May 2019. His extradition case is still before Spain’s National Court. At the time, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said Ancira’s arrest was based on allegations that he had defrauded Pemex.
Pemex purchased fertilizer business Fertinal from AHMSA for $635 million in 2015, when Lozoya headed Pemex.
Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called the fertilizer plant “junk” and said that Pemex overpaid.