Opaque transactions with exchange houses, million-dollar payments from real estate agencies in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, convoluted loans between companies… The analysis of the financial scheme in Andorra of the former PRI deputy Óscar Javier Lara Aréchiga, his family, and his political leaders, such as the former governor of Sinaloa Juan Sigfrido Millán Lizárraga, reveals a carefully studied strategy of concealment, according to documents to which Morning Express has had access.
Lara Aréchiga, who died of cancer in 2017 at the age of 66, controlled a network of seven accounts in Andorra since 2007 that recorded transactions worth 51 million dollars (about 47 million euros). Today, an Andorran judge, after seizing his Pyrenean funds, is investigating his wife and three children for money laundering. The investigation is part of a case in the European country called Operation Culiacán.
The financial network was deployed while Lara Aréchiga served as Secretary of Finance of Sinaloa (1999-2009), federal deputy (2009-2012) and deputy director of the National Water Infrastructure Commission of Mexico (2012-2013).
This is an x-ray of a family fortune that circulated through a labyrinthine scheme that mixes family, business and invisible transactions in tax havens:
Compensation and collections from real estate agencies
A code: 441750. With this number, the former deputy and his wife, Beatriz del Carmen Esquer de Lara, 72, managed an account in the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA) that raised 15.2 million dollars between 2007 and 2009. The couple’s main source of income came from the Mexican exchange houses Eurofimex (7.2 million) and B y B (1.3).
Andorran investigators frame this mechanism within a compensation scheme. Or, in other words, a money laundering system designed to make it difficult to trace funds. With this trick, the former deputy and his wife sent 8.5 million to their account in the Principality. The money was previously deposited in cash through Mexican exchange offices, according to the police.
According to investigators, Lara Aréchiga and his wife also received $783,320 in this encrypted account from a businessman linked to the construction of a luxury residential complex dedicated to the organization of private events in the Sinaloa city of Mazatlán and from the Mexican firm OEI Inmobiliaria SA de CV ($988,619). They also recorded funds from Tomás Rendón Fernández ($416,000) and from José Luis Lara Aréchiga, the politician’s brother ($4.2 million).
The PRI member transferred 2.6 million from this account to the account numbered in BPA 441739. Under this number, the former governor of Sinaloa between 1999 and 2004, Juan Sigfrido Millán Lizárraga, and his brother Enrique, have been hidden since 2007.
Investment and sale of land
The next chapter leads to the ex-congressman’s wife. She opened an encrypted account in her name, which her husband was authorized to use. The bank contract includes the name of the former delegate of the BPA branch in Mexico, Joan Marc Masson, who acted as a magnet to attract the fortunes of PRI politicians to this small Andorran bank.
When Oscar Lara Arechiga’s wife filled out the KYC form at the BPA (know your customer;In the “know your customer” scheme, a kind of third-degree scheme in which users inform the bank about their investment plans and the origin of their wealth, Esquer de Lara explained his intentions to invest $200,000. The money, he confessed without clarifying, came from “investments and the sale of land.”
There is no record of the widow, who presented herself to the bank as a graduate in Pedagogy, depositing this sum into her encrypted account at the BPA between 2011 and 2014, but she did give her husband power to use the funds in his personal account.
Esquer de Lara told the Andorran judge investigating him for money laundering last November that he was unaware of having accounts and financial products in his name in the principality. But the documentation in the possession of this newspaper and the Andorran investigators confirms his connection to three accounts.
From one of them, which she controlled under the protective cloak of number 442706, the politician’s wife transferred $23,325 to her husband’s brother, José Luis Lara Aréchiga, 70 years old.
A Panamanian foundation as a front
Under the umbrella of the Panamanian entity Hazare Foundation, the former PRI deputy for Sinaloa opened an account in the BPA that accumulated more than 15.3 million dollars, of which 1.2 ended up in a securities portfolio.
The statutes of this foundation list Óscar Lara Aréchiga as the first beneficiary, and his wife as the second, in the event of the politician’s death. After her death, his children will be named in equal parts. They all agreed before the Andorran judge that they did not recognize the existence of this foundation.
In 2018, the bank had a balance of more than 14 million dollars and accumulated 1.2 million in a securities portfolio. During the KYC, the former congressman stated that he expected to move 19 million.
Lara Aréchiga activated this account in 2008, when he was Secretary of Finance of Sinaloa and, therefore, in theory, could not place funds in a country protected by banking secrecy.
However, his bank file contains an undated document entitled “Declaration of cessation of activities of a Politically Exposed Person (PEP)”. This is the acronym used by financial institutions to describe those individuals who, because they have held a public office, must undergo special monitoring to prevent money laundering.
The same strategy of political disengagement was used by the former Secretary of Finance of Sinaloa to open the BPA account in 2008, which he controlled through the Dutch company Riana International BV. In it, Lara Aréchiga, through a network of front men, amassed more than 10 million dollars. The money, again, arrived through controversial exchange houses such as Eurofimex.
According to the Andorran police, this account was used to request a loan and act as a bridge with other members of the clan.
Brick money in an encrypted account
José Luis Lara Aréchiga, the politician’s brother, was listed since 2008 as the holder of an encrypted account in the BPA (442127) together with his relative and the latter’s wife.
With a balance of more than $580,000 in 2018, the account held income from the company Infrades SA de CV dedicated to the “promotion of social interest housing,” according to the politician’s brother when filling out the form at the bank to clarify the origin of his money.
Infrades SA de CV is part of a constellation of around twenty companies linked to the former congressman and his brother. It is a network that includes companies in commerce, agriculture and construction and extends across Sinaloa, Guanajuato and Baja California.
The Lara Aréchiga brothers’ businesses took off during the mandates of the Sinaloa governors Millán Lizárraga (1999-2004) and Jesús Aguilar Padilla (2005-2010), according to the weekly Riodoce.
Lara Aréchiga’s brother was also the representative of an account, where Desarrolladora Gos was listed as the holder, which transferred $80,087 to former governor Millán Lizárraga. And the former politician’s account was, in turn, in 2018, guarantor of a $3.3 million loan from José Luis Lara’s company.
Maneuver to disassociate oneself from the position
The account that Millán Lizárraga and his brother managed since 2007 at BPA – and in which they had accumulated 4.4 million in 2018 – had a peculiarity. The bank included in the computer system the politician’s “declaration of cessation of PEP activity” in April 2015, a month after the Andorran financial institution was intervened for an alleged crime of money laundering by corrupt networks in China, Russia and Venezuela.
The Lara Aréchiga couple was also the holder of another encrypted account with their brother José Luis and Cuauhtémoc López Montes de Oca. The 441849 account was opened in 2010 and had accumulated a balance of 2.7 million dollars until 2018. In his KYC, López Montes de Oca indicated that the companies linked to the account were subsidiaries of his company Servicios Sinaloenses. In the account that this last company opened, Tomás Rendón also appears as the representative in the BPA.
Through Andorra, a microstate of 78,000 inhabitants protected until 2017 by banking secrecy, Lara Aréchiga piloted a network that recorded transactions worth 51 million dollars.
To justify his assets, the politician provided the bank with land purchase and sale contracts and said he had shares in the Arizona (USA) firm Cedar Products and 3.8 million dollars in shares in the Mexican meat company Grupo Viz. The DEA (US anti-drug agency) links this last company with the Sinaloa cartel.
investigacion@elpais.es
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