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Mexico & Nafta - April 2014 (ISSN 1741-444X)
Federal deputies ensnared in extortion scandal
It is not just organised crime hitting mayors with extortion demands but also federal congressional deputies. This was the stark message conveyed by Bárbara Botello Santibáñez, the mayor of León for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in the central state of Guanajuato and president of the national conference of Mexican municipalities (CONAMM), on 26 March. The scandal of mayors being charged ‘commissions’ (dubbed ‘moches’) by federal deputies in exchange for obtaining federal resources for their municipalities has embroiled no less figures than the heads of the PRI and the right-wing opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) in the federal lower chamber, Manlio Fabio Beltrones and Luis Alberto Villarreal respectively.
