The National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (Inai) urged the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) from Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit to deliver to The Economist the number of complaints filed with the General Prosecutor of the Republic for crimes related to corruption and involving former presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Ernest Zedillo, Vincent Fox, Felipe Calderon, Enrique Peña Nietoas well as the current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Economist requested the FIU to provide information on the number of complaints it has filed with the FGR for crimes of operations with resources of illicit origin Y terrorist financing broken down by name of former president, date and possible open and closed investigations derived from the complaints.
In response, the FIU told this newspaper that it could not deliver said information since if it were disclosed, the right to honor of the former heads of the federal Executive, as well as of President López Obrador, would be affected.
“The individual is informed that this Administrative Unit is legally unable to issue any pronouncement on the existence or non-existence of documents related to natural and/or legal persons, received or generated by the FIU,” he indicated.
The FIU added that “exposing the information that contains data of identified or identifiable natural or legal persons could affect their honor.”
In its response, the body, currently headed by Paul Gomez, cited that the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) has issued a thesis on how the concept of honor should be understood and which specifies that “honor is injured by everything that affects the reputation that the person deserves, that is, the right that others do not negatively condition the opinion that others have to form of us”.
Given this response with folio: 0000600281721, The Economist requested an appeal for review before the Inai.
In the plenary session this Wednesday, January 12, Commissioner FFrancisco Javier Acuna Llamas presented the project resolution RRA11523/21, in which he stated that “this matter was chosen because it represents one of many cases in which they continue to be requested, because it is natural, rather, demanding, information that surrounds an aspect that can result or say it, it is complex in terms of the integrity of the people, in these cases, former officials and some officials on duty.”
Acuña Llamas specified in this context that although there is right of confidentiality In investigations, when dealing with former presidents and the current Mexican president, exceptions can be made as part of accountability.
“Why, in the case of former officials or officials of the highest level, is there an exception to what we have already said, can it be the rule of confidentiality? Well, because here the main good, which is naturally that of the accountability (…) these are situations that, if they are true and evidently proven or exist, would have to be revealed in the ways that we have already said, taking care, of course, of the points in which they could be exposed, because naturally for these it must be to do and a test of public interest is carried out that determines, naturally, that in these cases it is feasible to do so, right? We already said why, because of the importance of these figures”, he maintained.
For her part, the commissioner president of the Inai, White Lilia Ibarra Cadena, indicated that opening up to public scrutiny information related to high-level officials is something that the plenary session of the autonomous body has promoted for a long time.
“It is inserted in a set of determinations that the plenary of this Institute has been issuing over the years in which it has fought for the information opening, related to open investigations regarding high-level public servants, and also popularly elected representatives, in which confidentiality is overcome through the application of the proportionality test,” he commented.
After notifying the FIU of the Inai resolution, said institution has 15 business days to deliver the information to The Economist.