On Thursday, a former state governor for Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was extradited from Panama to Mexico , Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office and Mexico's Foreign Minister said in a statement.
Roberto Borge Angulo
, who governed Quintana Roo from 2010 to 2016, was taken under strict security from the offices of Panama’s national police to an air force base, where he boarded a Mexican plane to be flown back to Mexico City.
Mexican prosecutors accuse Borge of using funds obtained illegally , embezzlement , and abuse of public office . Borge has denied the allegations.
Borge was arrested in Panama City in June as he was preparing to board a flight to Paris.
Carlos Carrillo
, Borge's lawyer , told EL UNIVERSAL that Borge was a victim of abuse in the last hours prior to his extradition and that he will proceed against Panama in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights .
Later that day, Borge arrived in Mexico and he was presented before a judge in Mexico City upon his arrival at the Federal Criminal Justice Center , in Nezahualcóyotl , State of Mexico where Borge’s lawyers reported that the former governor suffers from kidney damage and depression .
On Friday, Borge finally arrived at the Center for Psychosocial Rehabilitation ( CEFEREPSI ) at 5:22 pm, after the judge send Borge to the Federal Center for Social Readaptation 16 " CPS Femenil Morelos ", a female penitentiary , by an alleged "mistake."
According to the Mexican Office of the Attorney General , Borge allegedly facilitated the acquisition and alienation of 22 plots belonging to the state of Quintana Roo in auction price for his relatives causing a MXN$ 900 million embezzlement per year.
For the PRI , the extradition is the latest reminder of corruption scandals as the party tries to rehabilitate its image ahead of a presidential election in July.
The PRI, which is trying to keep hold of power as President Enrique Peña Nieto ’s term ends, has faced a spate of graft allegations, and four of its former governors were arrested on such charges last year in various countries, including Borge.
Last month, Mexican authorities arrested Alejandro Gutierrez , a former high-ranking PRI official, in a corruption investigation in the northern state of Chihuahua .
Borge became the second politician extradited to Mexico from Central America in the last five and a half months. On July 17, 2017 , after being arrested on April 15 in the Guatemalan northwest for alleged federal and state crimes, Javier Duarte de Ochoa , former governor of Veracruz from 2010 to 2016, was extradited from Guatemala to Mexico.
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