Abel Barajas Agencia Reforma
PANAMA, Panama: Immigration agents detained Carlos Ahumada Kurtz this Friday upon arriving in Panama, for an Interpol red card that was issued based on arrest warrants issued in Mexico.
Diplomatic sources confirmed the capture of the businessman and said that the Mexican authorities maintain communication with their Panamanian counterparts, to determine in the next few hours the procedure to follow.
At the moment, Mexico has not processed the request for a provisional arrest warrant for extradition purposes.
The Argentine businessman has two arrest warrants pending in Mexico, one from the common jurisdiction and the other federal.
The first was issued in 2007 for the crime of fraud and the second in 2019 for alleged tax fraud of 1 million 647 thousand 236 pesos, due to the omission of the payment of income tax (ISR) in 2012.
In August 2020, the National Criminal and Federal Correctional Court Number 9 in Buenos Aires denied the extradition of Ahumada to Mexico for the tax fraud case.
However, in December of the same year, the Attorney General’s Office, through the Foreign Ministry, processed the second extradition request for the crime of fraud.
A year later, the National Criminal Court number 9 of Buenos Aires declared the surrender of the fugitive to Mexico appropriate.
That ruling was challenged by the businessman and, as far as is known, the dispute has not been ultimately resolved.
Although Argentina denied the surrender of Ahumada for tax fraud, if the FGR processes the request for provisional detention for extradition purposes, it may require it both for that crime and for fraud, since the businessman is now under the jurisdiction of another country.
In 2004, Ahumada was the detonator of the video scandals that led to prison for close collaborators of the then Head of Government Andrés Manuel López Obrador, such as René Bejarano and Gustavo Ponce.
In December 2021, when his extradition to Mexico was authorized in the first instance, the businessman threatened to expose high-level officials of President López Obrador’s Cabinet if the persecution against him did not end.
“For no reason will Andrés Manuel López Obrador, especially in this case Claudia Sheinbaum, be able to take me to Mexico,” he said on that occasion in an interview with Radio Formula.
«I do not want to disclose more videos and all the information I have about many current officials of the Government of Mexico. I’ll just tell you, one button is enough to show you: I don’t want to talk about Thalía Lagunes, current Senior Officer of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit; I don’t want to talk about Reyna Basilio, current head of purchasing at Pemex; I do not want to talk or give information about Horacio Duarte, general director of Customs, and so I can continue, they are people today of the highest level.
