Government Corruption Exposed After Mexican Journalist Was Abducted

Published: 02 June 2023

Mexico 001 20

Maria Teresa Montaño, the Mexican investigative journalist. (Photo: Ginette Riquelme, The Guardian)

By OCCRP

Exposing wrongdoing by government officials is not easy anywhere in the world, but in Mexico, where at least 17 journalists were reportedly murdered last year alone, it is often a matter of life and death. This is especially true if you plan to reveal something prior to elections.

Two years ago, Mexican investigative journalist María Teresa Montaño reported that her state government was wasting billions of pesos renting luxury vehicles for its staff. As her revelations drew the administration into scandal, she found herself pulled even further into the murky world of government procurement.

Montaño became obsessed with using the State of Mexico’s online procurement database to track down smaller and quirkier contracts for things like balloon decoration workshops.

"I was always glued to the system to see what they were buying," she said.

She suspected many contracts were fake, especially those handed to obscure companies based hundreds of kilometers away from her state, which is home to 17 million people and surrounds the country’s capital of Mexico City.

Montaño was gearing up to write another investigation –– and it had the potential to create another scandal for the state government, which faces elections this Sunday.

Then she got kidnapped.

“I thought they were going to shoot me, it was horrible,” recalled Montaño, who is the founder and chief editor of The Observer, where she had published her 2021 investigation into government waste.

The kidnappers –– who have never been identified –– released her after a harrowing few hours, making off with her computer and a folder containing contracts she had printed out.

Montaño knew she had to act fast in order to make sure her work didn’t go to waste if something else happened to her. After all, Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.

She uploaded her remaining documents on the matter to SafeBox, a secure platform for journalists to store sensitive information in case they are killed, detained, or otherwise prevented from carrying out their work.

The SafeBox Network is run by the non-profit media group Forbidden Stories, which organized a collaboration with Montaño to continue her investigation. On Wednesday, The Guardian and Forbidden Stories published their findings, reporting that dozens of suspicious contracts were doled out to companies that appeared to have little more than a name, and often listed addresses in far-flung locals.

“What caught my attention,” Montaño recalled, “was how is it possible that the most industrialized state in the country is hiring so far away, right?"

While it is not illegal to hire outside the state, the government should be able to justify why it chose a distant supplier over a local one, according to Muna Dora Buchahin Abulhosn, a former director of the forensic auditing unit at Mexico’s national audit authority.

The State of Mexico said, in a statement released after the Guardian and Forbidden Stories published their reports, that each contract was “in compliance with the law.”

"In the acquisition of goods, leasing and provision of services, through National Public Bidding procedures, all individuals and legal entities throughout the country may participate," the statement said.

Abulhosn said the suspicious contracts discovered by Montaño resembled others she investigated when she ran the forensic auditing unit at Mexico’s national auditor.

In 2018, she oversaw audits that showed 11 federal government agencies used at least 186 companies to divert millions of dollars. No one went to jail for the alleged corruption, and the "modus operandi'' continues, she said.

Even when companies are investigated, she said the audits rarely have any impact. Companies found to be involved in corrupt public contracts often just change their addresses or representatives, then keep working.

“Impunity is generalized, because it is known that nothing is going to happen,” said Buchahin, adding that these companies work in collusion with public officials and split the profits.

“It is a structured network of power, of senior officials, who –– by simulating contracts and services that supposedly support services and acquisitions –– simulate making payments for which they receive those services,” she said.

Likewise, Mexico is notorious for impunity for those who target media workers, including investigative journalists like Montaño.

“Of the 105 investigations into killings of journalists conducted by the federal Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression, since its creation in 2010, just six have led to homicide convictions,” Human Rights Watch said last year.

The investigation into Montaño’s kidnapping in August 2021 also appears stalled.

The government said in its statement that it "regrets and condemns the criminal act of which journalist Teresa Montaño Delgado was a victim,” adding that the state Attorney General's Office continues to investigate.

Montaño said she believes her abduction may have been connected to searches on the state government procurement database, which “detects where the request is being made, who is requesting it.”

She realized she had been identified personally through her searches: “I started receiving emails inviting me to attend courses on how to make contracts with the state government,” Montaño said.

After her kidnapping, Montaño fled to Spain, but returned to Mexico a few months later to continue her work –– despite the threat she still feels looming over her.

“There is not a single arrest, nothing,” she said. “They have not called me to ratify anything, they have not made a single inquiry.”