Mexico rocked by claims of corruption against three former presidents

Mexico’s political establishment has been shaken by claims that three former Mexican presidents and an all-star cast of lawmakers and aides may have been involved in alleged acts of corruption.

The accusations were leveled by Emilio Lozoya, the former head of Mexico’s state oil company Pemex, and will boost efforts by the country’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to portray himself as an anti-corruption crusader.

López Obrador, a 66-year-old nationalist, swept to power in 2018 pledging to rid Mexico of corruption and unseat the “mafia of power” he claimed had seized control of Latin America’s No 2 economy.

In a leaked 63-page deposition, Lozoya, who was extradited from Spain in July to face corruption charges of his own, dragged some of Mexico’s best-known politicians into a rapidly unfolding scandal.

According to the newspaper El Universal, the former Pemex chief implicated Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president from 2012 until 2018, in multimillion-dollar bribes and illegal campaign financing.

Reuters said Lozoya also claimed that Felipe Calderón – president from 2006 until 2012 – and Carlos Salinas – from 1988 to 1994 – had committed “acts possibly constituting crimes”.

Lozoya worked as international relations coordinator of Peña Nieto’s 2012 election campaign, and was later appointed to run Pemex.

“He was one of the masters of the universe,” said Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez, a sociologist in Mexico City. “He was appointed to that position because he was part of Peña’s most intimate circle.”

Lozoya was arrested in Spain in February and extradited to face charges he received more than $4m in bribes from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

On Thursday morning López Obrador, who is widely known as Amlo, told reporters he believed the leaked document was genuine but had not read it all because he “wouldn’t want to have nightmares”.

Amlo has previously said he hoped Lozoya’s extradition would contribute to the “purification” of Mexican public life.

Calderón hit back on Twitter claiming Mexico’s president was seeking to weaponize the former oil boss and his “ridiculous accusations” as “an instrument of revenge and political persecution”. “He’s not interested in justice but in a lynching,” Calderón said.

Neither Peña Nieto nor Salinas responded immediately to the allegations.

Related: Glossary of graft lays bare Mexico's lexicon of corruption

Few doubt the extent to which corruption has permeated elite Mexican politics. During Peña Nieto’s six-year term a series of eye-watering political scandals caused public outrage, helped pave the way for Amlo’s landslide election and saw Mexico slide dramatically down Transparency International’s corruption index.

But Calderón is not alone in suspecting that Amlo is using the investigation to eliminate powerful political opponents and bolster his corruption-fighting credentials.

Some have likened the Mexican president’s campaign to a high-profile anti-corruption drive waged by China’s Communist party leader, Xi Jinping. That crackdown allowed Xi to jail several prominent rivals, including China’s former security chief Zhou Yongkang and the Communist party heavyweights Bo Xilai and Sun Zhengcai.

“This is not a trial, it is a telenovela,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst in Mexico City.

“Some of the things Lozoya says might be true [and] given the position he is in and the improper way in which this has been handled, this will have a tremendous political impact. But no justice will be done.”

Related: 'Don't you get it?': late doctor's family urge Mexicans to heed Covid-19 risk

Others question the timing of the revelations, suspecting they may be a deliberate distraction from the coronavirus crisis currently playing out in Mexico.

Mexico now has the world’s third highest death toll, after the US and Brazil, and is set to surpass 60,000 deaths in the coming days.

“[The leak] distracts from everything else,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the Mexican magazine Nexos. “The economy is in tatters, nearly 60,000 people have died and there’s not a single thing going right as of this moment. But by creating a political circus there’s distraction.”