Braulio Carbajal
La Jornada newspaper
Thursday, May 28, 2020, p. twenty-one
This Thursday marks a year since Alonso Ancira, president and main shareholder of Altos Hornos de México (AHMSA), was arrested in Spain after being accused by the Mexican government of participating in a series of crimes that caused property damage to Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
However, the authorities have not concluded the extradition of the businessman, while the conditions of the steel workers deteriorate and with it the economy of the region where the company is located.
Monclova and the central region of Coahuila have suffered the loss of at least 12 thousand jobs in a year, a direct consequence of AHMSA’s economic problems. The crisis in the area was exacerbated by the effects on other steel supplier companies. Meanwhile, Ancira is still awaiting an extradition process that has gone into torpor due to the closure of activities due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Last Friday, AHMSA announced a 20 percent reduction in the wages of its workers for two fortnights, the second of May and the first of June, to face the drop in orders and in the price of steel, both as a result of the measures. taken to confront the pandemic.
On May 28, 2019, the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) confirmed that Interpol agents had detained the businessman at the airport in Mallorca, Spain, when he was preparing to take a flight to the United States.
The arrest was the result of a complaint that Pemex filed on March 5, 2019 in which the businessman is attributed with crimes related to the sale of a National Fertilizer plant (Fertinal) to a surcharge of $ 500 million to the State oil company , who at the time of the transaction was directed by Emilio Lozoya, also subject to the extradition process in Spain.
Less than 24 hours before Ancira’s arrest, the Treasury’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) ordered the bank accounts of AHMSA and Lozoya to be frozen, while an arrest warrant was issued against the latter.
However, it was not until the beginning of February this year when, also in Spain, Lozoya was arrested, accused of corruption in the purchase of the plant from AHMSA and for being involved in alleged bribes to award contracts to the Brazilian company Odebrecht.
Regarding Ancira, a month after his arrest, a judge in Spain released him on bail, on condition that he did not leave the country, appear every two days and pay a deposit of one million euros. Since then, Mexican justice has tried to extradite the so-called king of steel; however, along the way he has encountered a series of amparos.
Last March 10, during a hearing, Ancira asked not to be extradited to Mexico because, he said, it is a country without laws, while noting that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acts as a mythomaniac the size of Hitler.
The still president of AHMSA (he was ratified as head of the company last February) and his defense, argue that he is only collateral damage, given that the accusations against him are false, instigated by the López Obrador government, as part of a campaign against the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto.
In late April, the FGR reported that once the Spanish courts (closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic) are reopened in their entirety, it will restart the extradition processes of both Alonso Ancira and Emilio Lozoya, in order to be tried in Mexico for their alleged crimes of corruption and operations with resources of illicit origin.
Original Article: https://www.explica.co/ahmsa-crisis-charged-to-workers/
