The Case of the Black Widow

The Case of the Black Widow

?“Get down on the floor! Down on the floor! ordered one of the assailants as soon as they gained access to the house.

…

The first to fall was Isaac Gamboa Lozano, an important official in Luis Videgaray's tenure as the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, who was implicated in Operation Safiro, one of the most important corruption cases of Enrique Pe?a Nieto's six-year term.

The killers shot him cleanly in the temple…

Gamboa’s dead body… was left lying face up in a pool of blood…”.

?Thus, with the story of the multiple homicide of Gamboa Lozano's family (five people in total), the book El Caso Viuda Negra (Grijalbo, Mexico, 2022), co-authored by Manu Ureste, Zedryk Raziel and Arturo ángel, begins. Based on this event, the journalists investigate the last years of the life of the person who was the head of the Budgetary Policy and Control Unit of the Ministry of Finance in the previous six-year term and who was responsible, among other things, for signing agreements for the federal government to transfer funds to the states. For those in charge of state finances, Isaac was the person who had the greatest power of all: the power of money.

?Born into a modest family (his mother was from a small town in Hidalgo and his father lived for years in a poor neighbourhood in Iztapalapa), Isaac Gamboa studied at one of the most prestigious public schools in the country with a university loan. When he left Pe?a's administration, the economist of humble origins was a millionaire through his wife, Bethzabee Brito álvarez, who, during her husband's time as a public servant, allegedly moved money and real estate worth more than sixty million pesos using three shell companies.

?According to the journalists, these three companies "are part of a network of 29 companies linked by partners, legal representatives, addresses and telephone numbers, some of which have already been included in the SAT's blacklist of ghost companies". The authors argue that both the FIU and the Fiscal Prosecutor's Office detected that through these companies "multiple money laundering operations were allegedly carried out during the second half of Pe?a Nieto's six-year term and also so far during the current López Obrador administration…”.

?As an observer in the complex phenomenon of money laundering, I found it very interesting to see that, in this book, the authors show what the theory and the bodies responsible for the prevention of money laundering claim: that money laundering is often carried out using shell companies that, being newly created, receive millions of dollars; front companies; identical tax addresses; etc. However, I consider the way in which the journalists arrive at the amount allegedly laundered in this case to be incorrect. Those who read the book will form their own judgement.

?The title of the book comes from the fact that Gamboa's widow is being prosecuted for allegedly masterminding the murder because she wanted to run away with "her lover" and leave Isaac behind. But, as the reader will see, the book documents that there is no evidence (worthy of the name) to incriminate Bethzabee. The words with which Gabriela Warkentin sums up this affair: "The Case of the Black Widow... exhibits the rottenness of a system that protects and reproduces itself, that does everything not to die. Including killing" are also perfectly applicable to Mexico's much vaunted "new oral/adversarial system" which, according to its panegyrists, would finally deliver justice and, judging by this and many other cases, has turned out to be a disastrous failure.

?The book is interesting and worth reading because the authors have done extensive and well-documented research. It can be found in the main bookstores of the country.