Germán Goyeneche Ortega—an alleged financial operator for the Beltrán Leyva cartel—may be linked to a number of local and national politicians in Mexico, according to reports in the Mexican news media. Since Goyeneche’s arrest on Tuesday with cartel leader Héctor Beltrán Leyva, news reports have surfaced linking Goyeneche to members of the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party—PAN) and the Partido Verde Ecologista de México (Ecologist Green Party of Mexico—PVEM)—including the current and former municipal presidents of San Miguel de Allende and two members of the federal Chamber of Deputies.
Goyeneche was a member of the PVEM and reportedly was close to the party’s secretary general and federal deputy from Querétaro, Ricardo Astudillo. Astudillo recommended Goyeneche for the presidency of the Querétaro chapter of the Parlamento Ciudadano de México (Citizen’s Parliament of Mexico—Pacime), a position Goyeneche ultimately received. According to the PVEM’s leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Arturo Escobar, Goyeneche’s political rights within the party have been suspended.
In addition his links to the PVEM, Goyeneche is alleged to have ties to prominent politicans in the PAN. On Monday, two days before his arrest, Goyeneche—who had invested in a real estate development in San Miguel de Allende—attended a pre-campaign event for federal Deputy Ricardo Villareal García of the PAN. La Jornada has reported that Villareal admitted to knowing Goyeneche in a phone interview with its reporters yesterday. “San Miguel is a very small municipality and when someone comes and invests a lot of money, everyone knows about it,” Villareal said. “I have no reason to deny knowing him, but I have no relationship to him, none.”
If a closer relationship between the panista and Goyeneche is confirmed, it would represent yet another blow in what has been a difficult summer for the party that broke Mexico’s history of single-party rule—and for the Villareal clan. Earlier this year, Villareal’s brother, Luis Alberto Villareal, was replaced as party leader in the Chamber of Deputies after a video emerged that showed him dancing with young women described as “table dancers.”
