Former PRI president Enrique Peña Nieto has stated that he went into exile in Spain – where he has lived since 2019 – to facilitate his successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in the governance of the country and not to be a factor of distraction or controversy himself. Peña Nieto, the last president to emerge from the everlasting PRI (2012-2018), has indicated that, after leaving office, he debated between his desire to stay and live in Mexico and the obligation to become “a good ex-president”, ceasing be a relevant character and leave the country. The decision to go into exile was precipitated by an event of high political content: the capture, in July 2019—during the first year of López Obrador’s Government—of his lawyer and friend Juan Collado, whom the Prosecutor’s Office accused of organized crime, money laundering. of capital and tax evasion, and that he has million-dollar accounts in Andorra with which he has paid luxuries to important PRI politicians. Peña Nieto has made these statements in the book Confessions from exile: EPN (Planeta, 2024), written by journalist Mario Maldonado after several interviews with the PRI member in Madrid and in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, where he also lives.
“You have to give room for respect to those who are in charge of the Executive, and one way to do it is by subtracting yourself,” Peña Nieto told Maldonado. “I am convinced that one, when one is in this task, seeks and works to do good government management, to be a good president of Mexico, but there is also the implicit responsibility of becoming a good former president, and that is what look for”. The former president, who was also governor of the State of Mexico, where he was born, has stated that he will continue living outside the country, at least for the duration of López Obrador’s six-year term, which ends in September of this year, and has made it clear that he will not return. to politics. “I am interested in returning, but I have not decided whether permanently. I want to keep this healthy distance in this space from the current Government, but I plan to return,” he said.
In 2020, Peña Nieto obtained a golden visa, a residence permit granted to large investors in European Union countries. The former president bought a property in Madrid that same year, which he then put up for sale in 2022, after it became known in Mexico that there were open investigations by the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) and the Prosecutor’s Office into the origin of his assets and for allegedly having collected one million dollars through an irregular transfer scheme. The visa granted to Peña Nieto—which he was able to obtain “without problem,” Maldonado points out—obliges him to live outside Spain for six months each year, because he is not a tax resident. For this reason, Punta Cana became something like a second home, after Madrid. The person who put the Caribbean city on the radar was, precisely, Collado, The lawyer of powerwho recommended Punta Cana for its climate and its beautiful golf courses, a hobby of the former president.
The PRI member has said that at some point during the presidential transition, between July and November 2018, he informed López Obrador, who had already been elected president, of his desire to stay and live in Mexico. “I then shared it with the president-elect, that this was my wish, and he obviously had no opposition to the issue,” he said. Although Peña Nieto left the country shortly after handing over the presidential sash, he intended to return soon. But then came the chain of Collado catastrophes. In May 2019, a few months after handing over power to López Obrador, Peña Nieto attended the wedding of the lawyer’s daughter. A photo of the event shook Mexican politics, as it questioned the limits of the division of powers. Among Collado’s distinguished guests were Arturo Elías Beltrán, who was a prosecutor in the Peña Nieto Government, as well as Supreme Court ministers Eduardo Medina Mora, Luis María Aguilar and Alfredo Gutiérrez.
The former president later concluded that he was wrong to go to that event. “The message transmitted about the person of Juan Collado,” writes Maldonado, “probably by the then incoming Government of López Obrador, had the expected effect on Peña Nieto: after the arrest of his friend and lawyer he made the decision not to return to Mexico, at least within the next six years. He knew at that moment that he had made a mistake by attending, on May 19, 2019 in Mexican lands, the wedding of Collado’s daughter.
Peña Nieto has defended his assets, and has explained that part of it comes from the income his mother obtains from renting commercial premises in Atlacomulco (State of Mexico). “I already knew they were watching it. “It is what I have, with which I bought a property in Spain and it is super transparent,” he said. The former president has indicated that the investigations against him remain open, without progress, although he says they could be reactivated if it becomes politically necessary in the context of this year’s elections. “I know that the Prosecutor’s Office has it and I have followed up with my lawyers; They have it frozen, they have not closed it,” he said. “I’m going to push a little to close it, but when the presidential election has passed. Before, I don’t think they are going to close it. They have to have it in case it is offered.” However, the PRI has denied having made a non-aggression pact with López Obrador. The pending files seem to corroborate his assertion.
The loneliness of Peña Nieto
The former president has said that he saw López Obrador about four times, one of them at his house, before he officially assumed the presidency. They ate in the company of the writer Beatriz Gutiérrez, López Obrador’s wife. In that meeting, according to the PRI member, the incoming president asked him for advice on how to govern. “What else could I suggest to you, if you are already a political actor?” Peña Nieto told him. López Obrador insisted. The outgoing president was sincere and told him to “be careful” of the businessmen “who call themselves his friends from Monterrey.” Peña Nieto then told him—as he remembers—how the royal businessmen betrayed a political agreement to support the candidate nominated by the PRI for the governorship of Nuevo León in 2015. In the end, according to the PRI, the businessmen ended up supporting Jaime Rodríguez, The Bronco.
Peña Nieto has expressed respect for López Obrador and has recognized his victory at the polls, not only as the first left-wing president, but as the most voted in history. He recalled that a group of businessmen asked him to intervene in the 2018 elections to derail the leftist candidate; that they suggested dropping the PRI candidate, José Antonio Meade, and supporting the PAN candidate, Ricardo Anaya; who ultimately asked him to look for magnate Carlos Slim to become the candidate of the PRI and the PAN. The anecdotes about the intervention of the businessmen were told by López Obrador himself in the book that he published this year, ¡Gracias! “The truth of the matter is that López Obrador had already won the election. Many reproach me, because they wanted him to prevent him from winning at all costs, but what did they want him to do?
Peña Nieto has spoken about his meetings in Madrid with former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, one of López Obrador’s great political enemies who also lives in Spain, but has assured that his relationship with him is less close than is thought. Peña Nieto has said that he usually sees Salinas twice a year, once on Christmas Eve. Regarding the PAN member Felipe Calderón, his predecessor in the presidency and also resident in Spain, he has had less kind words and assures that they do not have a good relationship. “I am not a Calderonista. I take zero with him. I don’t get along badly, but I don’t get along well either,” he said. Maldonado adds: “(Peña Nieto) added that, in general, Felipe Calderón is much more surly than all the former presidents with whom he lived and that, although he preferred not to live with any of them, the PAN member is the one he would least have with. “I wanted to do it.”
The former president has recalled the political crises that collapsed his legitimacy and made him the most unpopular president in history: Ayotzinapa case and the White House (the journalistic investigation that revealed that Peña Nieto and his then wife, Angélica Rivera, had acquired the property from a contractor of his Government). The PRI member says he regrets the damage control: that Rivera came out to say that the house was his and that he was paying for it with the earnings she obtained as an actress in Televisa. “I should never have allowed my wife to give that explanation and for her to expose herself in such a way,” she shared. The worst thing, however, was how, from within his government, a kind of conspiracy of political and business groups began to take shape to remove him from the presidential chair and call new elections, as he has pointed out. “This happens just before I turned two years old. “They wanted to fuck me, they wanted to throw me away,” he said.
The conspiracy, if there was one, had no effect. Peña Nieto concluded his six-year term, handed the presidential sash to López Obrador and left the country. He has revealed to Maldonado that, since his more forced than voluntary exile, he spoke again with López Obrador recently, on September 15 of last year, while the president inaugurated a section of the Mexico-Toluca Interurban Train, which Peña Nieto left unfinished in his six-year term and that the current Government has continued to build (the president baptized the train as The Insurgent). The call was via WhatsApp, through the cell phone of López Obrador’s personal assistant, Daniel Asaf, always according to Maldonado’s story. Peña Nieto thanked the president for calling him, a day earlier, a “democrat,” for not having succumbed to the pressures of getting involved in the 2018 elections. López Obrador reiterated that deference to him by phone. “Thank you, Enrique. You behaved like a democrat. I’m not going to forget that. “May you be well,” López Obrador told him. They hung up.