BACKGROUND

Javier Duarte de Ochoa was Governor of the State of Veracruz from December 2010 to October 2016. In 2016, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) began investigating Duarte for the possible embezzlement
of approximately 200 million dollars of public resources. On April 15, 2017, he was arrested in Guatemala and later extradited to Mexico to confront money laundering and organized crime charges.

The former governor faced a possible sentence of up to 55 years in prison. However, the Attorney General’s Office reclassified the crime from Organized Crime to a less severe one: Criminal Association. This reclassification reduced the maximum sentence to 25 years. Finally, on September 26, 2018, a Federal Judge sentenced Javier Duarte to only nine years after celebrating a plea agreement.

Javier Duarte bribed the heads of the AGO in exchange for them allowing him illegal access to a plea agreement with a reduced sentence. The plea agreement was unlawful since the case did not meet Mexican law requirements, such as paying comprehensive damage reparation and obtaining approval from the Assistant Attorney General for the Investigation of Federal Crimes. In an interview conducted from the detention center, Javier Duarte publicly stated that he had given a millionaire sum of money to the heads of the AGO to access a plea agreement and to prevent the prosecutors from taking legal actions against his then-wife, Karime Macías.

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