Collapse of Dignity (42 page)

Next Acosta became a mercenary lawyer for Grupo México—though to best serve their purposes, he acted as if he were an independent attorney. Since early 2007, just after his dismissal from Calderón's cabinet, Acosta had served Grupo México. The company had recruited him specifically to take on the case of Morales, Castilleja, and Perales and lead the charge in the case against me and my colleagues. Though judges had blocked arrest warrant after arrest warrant, Acosta kept on pushing. It should have been obvious that Germán Larrea was footing the bill for his fees; Morales and the others never could have afforded this lawyer and a drawn-out legal battle on their own salaries. Acosta's services would have cost many times more than the three accusers' annual pay combined. (The protracted legal battle was a financial drain on the union, too, of course—one of the most important lawyers from Grupo México, Salvador Rocha, approached Marco del Toro in a restaurant and cynically said, “Keep filing those amparos, Marco. You're making me rich!”)

In every media appearance, Agustín Acosta behaved like a Grupo México spokesperson, publicly insulting the union's executive committee as though he himself were a party in the conflict. He acted as if he were defending thousands of righteously angry miners rather than three tools of a morally bankrupt corporation. Acosta, through Grupo México, also enjoyed cozy relationships with many judges, court officials, and the PGR, and he often got word of resolutions in the case before they were officially announced. He would often share verdicts with reporters before they were formally issued—at a time when only the judge himself could have legally known the outcome. When making these “predictions” to the media, he acted as though he were some sort of soothsayer.

During Linares's trial, Acosta didn't make a single move without consulting Grupo México's primary legal firm: Zinser, Esponda, and Gómez Mont. Acosta constantly denied any connection to the firm, but the truth proved difficult to hide. One of the younger attorneys at that firm, a man named Roberto García, was given the assignment of coaching
Acosta through the Linares case. García would show up at every one of the hearings in the Linares case and sit very near the front. Naturally, the judge did not allow García to participate, since he was not a party in the trial and was not representing anyone involved. Yet at almost every public hearing, there he was, sitting in right at the front of the courtroom. Marco del Toro, fully aware of the relationship between García and Acosta, would each time ask the judge to have him move further to the back, declaring that García had been sent by Grupo México to support Acosta. After each time this happened, García would move to the back of the room but then slowly and surreptitiously make his way back up to the front, closer to Acosta, as the day progressed.

One day, Marco turned around during a hearing to see García handing Acosta a small yellow slip of paper. Marco immediately shouted for the judge's attention. Judge Silvia Carrasco, like a schoolteacher reprimanding children for passing notes, ordered that Acosta hand over the paper. Clearly embarrassed, Acosta obeyed. It turned out to be a Post-it, on which García had written a series of questions for Acosta to ask the person being cross-examined that day. At Marco's request, the court certified that this transaction between García and Acosta had occurred, and the Post-it was added to the case file as evidence. There it remains as irrefutable proof that Grupo México is the driving force behind the persecution of Juan Linares, and by extension, all of Los Mineros.

Over the course of Linares's defense, the judge heard many statements
that confirmed Juan's innocence. The executives of Scotiabank themselves—the former trustees of the Mining Trust—were once again very clear in saying that the union's finances had been managed honestly, and the same was said by accounting experts, both the officially appointed ones and the one acting on behalf of the defense.

But there was one witness Marco wanted above all others. There was one person who deeply understood the conflict that had led to Juan's arrest, a man who had been involved for decades, and who had been instrumental
in setting up the very Mining Trust that was being disputed. More than anything, Marco del Toro wanted to get Germán Larrea in the courtroom. On January 9, 2009, before Judge Trujillo had taken over the case from Judge Carrasco, Marco entered testimony from Germán Feliciano Larrea and his brother Genaro as evidence in the case. (Genaro has held several top positions within Grupo México and was familiar with the case as well.) This move on Marco's part meant that the two Larrea brothers were going to be required to make a formal declaration about the circumstances behind the fraud accusation—specifically against Linares, but they were the same charges as those against me and the others. We were extremely curious about what Larrea would say under Marco's cross-examination, since Germán himself had in 1990 signed a document clearly stating that the $55 million was for the union, not for the individual workers (and that distinction was the basis of Morales's claim). Calling Germán and Genaro as witnesses was a simple development, but it would change the course of the entire trial.

As soon as he heard he was going to be summoned to testify before Judge Trujillo, Germán Larrea told his counselors to prevent his appearance at all costs. He is a famously secretive man who has never given an interview and rarely appears at public social events. Indeed, few people had even seen a picture of him until the Miners' Union obtained one (we would later legally acquire a copy of his driver's license and passport) and distributed it. Though Larrea is listed as the second-wealthiest person in Mexico, he lives such a hermetic, introverted, anonymous life that taking pictures of or with him is strictly prohibited. Nowhere—on the Internet or in any of the company's materials—are there photographs of him.

On January 14, the court sent a clerk to Grupo México's headquarters in Mexico City to deliver the official legal summons. The clerk was received at the building by a secretary, who said that the Larreas did indeed work on the fourth floor. She told the clerk that neither man was there at the moment, but that she would deliver the documents to them when they returned. Two days later, however, she sent the summons back to the court with a note claiming that the Larreas did not in fact work at the building in question. As we expected, Germán wasn't going to make this easy.

About a month later, Marco del Toro had done some research into the woman who'd received the clerk. Her name was Marisol Barragán, and not only did she work for Grupo México, but she was actually one of the company's internal lawyers. Marco petitioned the judge to summon her to the court and, unlike her bosses, she did appear. However, under cross-examination, she refused to cooperate and wouldn't explain why she had covered for the brothers Germán and Genaro. Finally, Marco stood up and declared to the judge that Barragán was lying to the court. That was a crime, Marco announced, so he would be pressing charges against her. Barragán's face went white as a sheet, and she reluctantly admitted that she did in fact serve as internal counsel for Grupo México.

We'd caught Barragán in a lie, but we still didn't have the brothers. The two of them would entirely disregard a series of judicial orders over the following months, flouting the law shamelessly. When Germán was summoned to appear in U.S. courts, as he had been recently in a case in Texas involving Grupo México subsidiary ASARCO, he did obey the judge's order to appear. But in Mexico, Germán thought he could get away with nearly anything.

Throughout our attempts to get Larrea into court, the PGR itself got involved. Bizarrely, its efforts were not on behalf of the court but on behalf of the resisting witnesses. Rather than ensuring Juan Linares's right to a fair trial, the attorney general's office filed a series of amparos against the admission of the Larreas' testimony in the case. Not once did it explain what conceivable reason it had for such an action. (Of course, we knew the real story—that the PGR was, as usual, defending powerful business interests.)

Fortunately, the PGR's attempts to have Larrea's testimony thrown out were denied, and the Sixth Unitary Court in Criminal Matters of the First Circuit confirmed our right to interrogate the Larreas. But the brothers still wouldn't cooperate. On a total of nineteen occasions, they failed to comply with the court summons.

The Larreas' lawyers at Zinser, Esponda, and Gómez Mont had also gotten involved; they too had begun filing amparos against the summons. These lawyers used every legal ruse they could think of to keep
the brothers out of court, but Marco argued successfully against them, and amparo was denied. The Larreas were now racking up fines for their refusal to appear, and by March, Marco requested that the court order a three-day arrest of both brothers.

On March 24, 2009, the newspaper
Milenio
published the following story:

As soon as the story ran, Agustín Acosta began calling the paper and denying what had been stated in
Milenio
, again acting as if he were a Grupo México spokesperson. The journalist who wrote the story, Blanca Valadez, got in touch with Marco del Toro—she was concerned she may have inadvertently published something inaccurate in her article. Carlos Marín, editorial director of Grupo Milenio, had apparently scolded her about the story, since he had received many phone calls, from Acosta and others, claiming that there was no arrest warrant for Germán Larrea. Marco assured her that indeed there was, and Valadez asked him if he could provide proof that backed up her story.

Marco promptly sent her a copy of the judicial decision, which explicitly confirmed the truth of the article she'd written. Seeing the proof, both Marín and Valadez thanked us for setting the record clear, relieved that the paper had not published any false information.

Yet, on the following day,
Milenio
published another story about the Larrea summons that, strangely, hardly mentioned the document we'd sent them. Instead, the article dedicates most of its space to Acosta and is presented with a headline that quotes his blatant lie: “Larrea ‘did not receive an arrest warrant.'”

Valadez writes in the second article:

This is a shocking example of how wealthy individuals can directly sway the supposedly unbiased press. Apparently a few phone calls from Grupo México's people were sufficient to relegate our hard evidence to the tail end of the article. To blur the truth, they gave us only a small paragraph and didn't even clearly explain the incontrovertible proof we supplied. This was on top of the fact that Acosta once again had no reason to defend Larrea, since he stated repeatedly that Larrea and Grupo México were not his clients and were not involved in his efforts on behalf of Morales, Castilleja, and Perales. All throughout this drama, we released press releases about Germán Larrea's unconscionable avoidance, doing our best to present the truth that wasn't being shown in the mainstream media.

Nearly six months after our original request for the Larreas' testimony, we still hadn't laid eyes on Germán or his brother. In accordance with the court's ruling that we had a right to such testimony, the PGR was required to make every effort to produce these witnesses. In the fulfillment of that task, it should have made full use of the Agencia Federal de Investigacion (AFI)—a federal agency similar to the FBI—over which the PGR exerts control. Yet given the PGR's attitude on the matter thus far, we doubted they were trying very hard to bring Germán and Genaro in.