President Andrés Manuel López Obrador questioned the honesty of Alejandro Díaz de Léon, governor of the Bank of Mexico (Banxico), who will have to be relieved next December, for endorsing the purchase of fertilizer plants at a premium price when he was at Nacional Financiera.
“The one who is governor of the Bank of Mexico was the one that approved the credit for the fertilizer plant in 2015. Fertilizer plants that were acquired at very high prices, we have a debt of one billion dollars for that operation, so if they were good technicians would not have carried out those operations, ” AMLO said.
“In other words, let’s see how that is justified. I heard that he was just arriving, he was working in the Treasury and then they sent him to Nacional Financiera, and they had already done the operation, I don’t know if (Luis) Videgaray or (José Antonio) Meade because they are the same team. The operation was already in place, but he had to sign, if it were an honest technician he would have reviewed the sale and purchase contract and realized that it was a contract contrary to the public interest, that it was a bad operation and he would not have signed, no I would have accepted ”, Lopez Obrador declared in his peculiar style.
AMLO stressed that this type of agreement was only given as a slogan, from the Treasury and the Presidency, so that Díaz de León turned out to be one of those officials who say yes to everything and that is why they placed him in the Banxico.
“Because there is no way that the negotiation has come out in Nacional Financiera, they gave him the order from the Treasury and from above. This was the purchase of the fertilizer plant from Mr. (Alonso) Ancira,” he explained.
He recalled that in that purchase there was a Pemex advisor, Rogelio Gasca Neri, who cast a vote to express his disagreement with that purchase, which, he said, is an example of a good official.
Recently, the federal government received 216 million dollars from Mexican businessman Alonso Ancira, as reparation for the damage caused to Pemex by the sale of that plant at a premium, despite the fact that it was scrapped.
The president rejected that, after last Friday he announced that he would propose to the Senate an honest profile to relieve Díaz de León, which has caused economic instability. He said that if there was a variation in the peso it was because of the strengthening of the dollar that day.
Despite the criticism he launched against the head of Banxico, he reiterated that the Executive will remain respectful of the financial institution.
“We are going to fulfill the commitment to respect the autonomy of the Bank of Mexico, we have done so until now and we will continue to do so, we are not going to intervene in the policy of the Bank of Mexico.”
The president stressed that perhaps Díaz de León’s friends thought that he would continue in office, but he stated that he did not agree “to give continuity to technicians from the neoliberal period who did damage to the country.”
“Regardless of the legal issue, we need renewal and we are going to propose a good economist, with experience in managing the economy, finance, and serious, responsible people who will know how to lead the Bank of Mexico so that it remains macroeconomic stability ”, he pointed out.
“It will not be a great turnaround for everyone to be calm, our proposal will be a serious, responsible, honest, efficient economist,” he assured.
As of Friday, May 21st, the President announced that he would not ratify Díaz de León in office. Jesús Esquivel, deputy governor of the Bank of Mexico, and Arturo Herrera, secretary of the Treasury, are the ones who ring for the relief.
Source: El Financiero
