Peña Nieto puts his luxury home in Madrid up for sale after learning that the Prosecutor’s Office was investigating him
It is presented as an “impressive recently renovated apartment”, it has a magazine decoration and is located in the Madrid neighborhood of Almagro. With this lure, a real estate company put up for sale last Friday the home in the Spanish capital of former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), as EL PAÍS has been able to verify.
The offer was published on a real estate portal hours after the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of Mexico announced that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) was investigating the former president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for allegedly charging a million dollars ( 990,579 euros) through an irregular transfer scheme.
Peña Nieto is asking $652,918 (650,000 euros) for his property: a 139-square-meter home located on the first floor of a classic-looking estate built in 1980.
The property has a large living room with two rooms, an open kitchen, two bathrooms and a 34-meter terrace. “It’s the jewel,” says the selling agency about this apartment with four-meter ceilings.
The bedroom of the property has a bathroom suite room and a large dressing room. “It is an impressive home, ready to move in with furniture, appliances, everything included in the price,” reads the ad. “It is in a very charming area for shopping. The proximity to the Fuencarral axis and the Barrio de Salamanca stands out, ”adds the claim.
The former president’s property is located in a street of old and unreformed houses that contrasts with the luxury, quality and modern design of the apartment. Its main real estate value lies in being located just 50 meters from the stately José Abascal street.
This newspaper has unsuccessfully tried to obtain the version of the former Mexican president, who resides in Spain.
Peña Nieto’s property, which was deeded on September 18, 2020, was acquired without a mortgage and thanks to a subsequent reform of the property, which turned the initial commercial premises into a “luxury apartment,” according to this newspaper.
Sources close to the former president assure that he paid a little more than 504,072 dollars (500,000 euros) for this house, to which the expenses of the reform and decoration of the house should be added.
When asking for 650,000 euros for housing, the profit margin is low, according to real estate experts. “The house was under construction more than a year ago. They are from the Mexican embassy, they come very rarely,” explains an employee of a nearby store.
Peña Nieto has used this luxurious home for just three weeks, according to different testimonies.
The acquisition of the property in the Almagro neighborhood made it possible for the former president to obtain a golden visa or visa gold, a residence permit in Spain for non-EU citizens that the Government grants to highly qualified professionals, entrepreneurs or investors who acquire real estate for more than 500,000 euros (504,072 dollars), as was the case with Peña Nieto. The procedure was approved in 2013 by the former president of the Spanish Government Mariano Rajoy. And, since then, it has allowed the rapid installation in Spain of hundreds of Russian, Chinese or Venezuelan citizens.
This newspaper also reported that the former president, despite having acquired this property, lived in the exclusive Valdelagua urbanization, in the Madrid municipality of San Agustín de Guadalix (13,538 inhabitants). His residence is a villa built on a plot of 2,500 square meters that appears in the name of a construction company. It is a firm that acquired it through a mortgage of 889,500 euros and is controlled by a businessman with interests in Mexico and Chile.
Peña Nieto is in the center of the target after last Thursday Pablo Gómez, head of the FIU —branch of the Ministry of Finance against money laundering— announced that the FGR was investigating him for receiving a million dollars (990,579 euros) through a scheme that made it possible to charge an account in Spain between 2019 and 2020, when the PRI had already left power.
The former president, according to the investigations, had the help of a blood relative to enter this money after leaving power.
The investigations also link the former PRI leader with two companies affected by fiscal and financial irregularities. Peña Nieto is a shareholder with his relatives in one of these companies. One of them was created when the PRI was in power.
The second company —according to the investigation— is connected to a multinational that received contracts for more than 500 million dollars (496 million euros) from the federal government during Peña Nieto’s six-year term and moved its funds between 2015 and 2021 in the form of transfers. to Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The stench of corruption from the last PRI presidential term does not extend only to Peña Nieto. It is also projected onto other members of his government. The one who was director of Petróleos Mexicanos during his Executive, Emilio Lozoya, promised to deliver to the Prosecutor’s Office evidence of the management of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to buy wills in Mexico in exchange for public awards.
And the lawyer and trusted man of the former president, Juan Collado, is being investigated for money laundering in Andorra, where he moved more than 110 million dollars through a labyrinthine network of 24 accounts. The agents doubt the origin of his assets.
Meanwhile, Peña Nieto assured on his social networks, after learning of the FGR’s latest attack against him, that he trusted the institutions and impartiality of the government of his successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
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