RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, who has made combating graft his top issue, said the public should see all evidence linked to bribes allegedly paid to lawmakers that led to the passage of reforms he opposed.
An unverified video showing piles of cash being handed to Mexican congressional staffers went viral on Monday, fuelling a corruption scandal that is already convulsing the country, even as the clip’s source and context remain unclear.
During his regular morning news conference, AMLO specifically referenced a video introduced as part of sworn testimony in a corruption case in which the former head of Mexico’s state-run oil company Pemex has accused Lopez Obrador’s predecessor of ordering bribe payments.
Hours later a shaky four-minute clip appeared on YouTube showing plastic bags filled with neatly bundled stacks of cash apparently being turned over to two senior Senate staffers who then worked for the opposition National Action Party, or PAN.
The source of the video remains unclear, as do the date and location of its recording.
One of the Senate staffers in the video, Guillermo Gutierrez, was promptly fired by tweet from his post as personal secretary to the PAN governor of Queretaro state, after the video was released.
The other staffer, Rafael Caraveo, denied on Twitter that the cash was a bribe, but offered no further explanation. The video was posted to a YouTube page created on Sunday under the name of Juan Jesus Lozoya.
Source: MercoPress