Breathe
By Ami Sosa Vera and Concepción Peralta Silverio
In 2021 everything changed for Silvano Aureoles Conejo, the former governor of Michoacán (2015-2021) and former president of the Chamber of Deputies (2014-2015) in the era of President Enrique Peña Nieto, his candidate to succeed him as governor of the state lost in the June elections to the Morena candidate, thus concluding his rise in the country's public life.
Silvano Aureoles, the last governor of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), then began his "Tour for Democracy", of which only his photo outside the National Palace is remembered, sitting on his little green bench, without being received by President Andrés López Obrador; he went to Washington and denounced before the head of the Organization of American States (OAS) the alleged intervention of drug traffickers in the Mexican elections. In 2023 he wanted to be the candidate for the Presidency of the Republic for the Opposition Front and lost to Xóchitl Gálvez. He was appointed responsible for Sustainable Urban Development of that project, but resigned days later for not being taken into account as he expected.
In 2024 the PRD leadership did not place him on the plurinominal lists to assure him a place as a legislator, and a privilege that would protect him from future investigations; he competed for a federal deputation and lost; his party lost its national registry and what is left of it has initiated the process to expel him from its ranks.
Finally, on March 1, 2025, at the request of the Attorney General's Office (FGR), a judge ordered his arrest for corruption crimes such as embezzlement (misappropriation of public goods or funds), operations with resources of illicit origin, fraudulent administration and criminal association for the fraud committed in the construction of 7 Civil Guard barracks that were unusable, made with plastic walls.
Journalism did its job
In 2021, sponsored by the Unesco Journalism Support grant, the British Embassy in Mexico and the National Institute for Access to Public Information and Data Protection (INAI), we went to Michoacán to investigate Aureoles Conejo's administration. Sources told us of countless cases of corruption in the areas of health, education, security and the environment. Teachers were on strike due to lack of payments and the Federation avoided sending resources to rescue them for fear that these would be diverted to pay off other state debts; the health sector suffered from a lack of supplies and the Health Union had denounced the looting and theft of medicines on a large scale without anything happening; criminal groups were growing and clashing bloodily, putting the population at risk, and the deforestation of forests to turn them into avocado orchards was vertiginous.
At the same time, the governor and his followers squandered public money frivolously. His trips in helicopters, his large convoy of armored trucks were public and constant, he left countless local construction companies without works, he subleased construction machinery and state vehicles at an overprice. His parties, his taste for horses and women became known to his close circle. In April 2021, a video captured him getting out of his truck to push a demonstrator in the violent municipality of Aguililla. Silvano suffered from paranoia, a former collaborator told us, all the time he felt he was being chased, that is why his bunkers and his secret passageway in the Government House, revealed in November 2021 by the new governor, Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla.
Former party colleagues said that Silvano had betrayed the ideals of the left since years ago, when he served the interests of Enrique Peña Nieto's government to help achieve and sustain the Pact for Mexico, but the most serious thing was that he gave up his role as a statesman and allied himself with all the criminal groups in Michoacán. He received money from all of them, they said.
There was no trace of the irregularities of the Civil Guard barracks in the local or federal audits, nor were there any complaints that could be used to demonstrate their corruption. In fact, if today we know about the fraud of more than 5 billion pesos of the "plastic barracks", it is not because of the review and intervention of the ASF, but in spite of it. Despite the fact that they were built with federal money, their auditors did not detect or report the irregularities committed during those years. In any case, the merit belongs to Ramírez Bedolla's government, which matched the scheme of diversion of resources with the construction and leasing contracts, the quality of the works, the cost overruns, the times and the legality of the agreements, and filed the complaints before the FGR in 2022.
In July 2023 the ASF filed before the FGR two factual complaints against the Government of Michoacán for not resolving the observations of audit 964 DEGF, from 2020, which contained three statements of observations for 348; 1,221; and 13.5 million pesos. The audits do not mention the works, the companies or who, when, how or where the diversion of these resources occurred. Conveniently for Silvano Aureoles, the auditors decided to omit these corruption mechanisms in the state.
Amidst so many rumors and indications, we decided to investigate his major public work, the new General Hospital and the new Children's Hospital, which replaced the old hospitalsThe new General Hospital and the new Children's Hospital, which replaced the old hospitals that served the population without social security, whose cost exceeded 3 billion pesos and which had many observations from the ASF. We documented and published the simulation of competition for the construction and equipment of both hospitals, whose contracts ended up in the hands of the companies of Carlos Herrera Tello and Alexis Nickin Gaxiola, political allies and friends of Silvano; we found cost overruns of medical equipment, unjustified purchases due to their enormous quantity, illegal agreements and structural problems in the construction. Equipping the 250-bed General Hospital cost 653 million pesos, the medical equipment of the 100-bed Children's Hospital cost 624 million pesos.
More than three thousand pieces of equipment were purchased for the General Hospital that in practice were used in the Children's Hospital. This was possible thanks to the administrative "help" that invoiced the same good twice, accepted equipment without serial numbers, and received delivery certificates with missing goods. Doctors and nurses at the Children's Hospital revealed to us that when inspections arrived they were "loaned" goods from the General Hospital and the next day they were returned. At least five companies and officials of the Michoacán Health Services, such as the former secretary Diana Celia Carpio Ríos, were implicated in this scheme.
However, we did not manage to find out where the diverted money went. In the Public Registry of Property and Commerce (RPPC) of Michoacán, three properties appeared in the name of Silvano Aureoles Conejo: two in Morelia and one in Zitácuaro, the latter in co-ownership with his daughters Elizabeth and Sofía Aureoles Geymonat. The three properties were valued at just over four million pesos, purchased in 2007 and 2009.
Previously, as a candidate for the government of Michoacán, he had reported having an apartment in Mexico City.
His brother Juan Luis García Conejo had a property in Zitácuaro of 2,025 square meters, which he bought in 2017, valued at ten cents. The other brother Antonio García Conejo bought in 2018 a property of almost two million pesos in Morelia and another in Huetamo, in 2017, which he obtained for ten cents.
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We identified four properties in Zitácuaro in the name of Carlos Maldonado Mendoza, former Secretary of Finance, now imprisoned for the fraud of the barracks, but there was no information on the cost or the year in which he bought them.
In the Michoacán Cadastral we asked for the names of the owners of the ranches that Aureoles boasted as his during his parties. Of nine properties consulted, five had no owner, they appeared as "Not Found", one was in the name of his mother, Conejo Cornejo Álvara, in the municipality of Huetamo, and the other three were in the name of other individuals. It should be noted that Elizabeth Villegas Pineda, former administrative delegate of the Secretariat of Public Security (SSP), linked to process for the case of the barracks, was director of the Michoacán Cadastre from October 2017 to December 2018.
The arrest warrant against the former governor means that the FGR found what we could not with the tools at our disposal: to demonstrate that the money diverted, at least that of the barracks, ended up in the possession of Silvano Aureoles and his collaborators in the area of Security, a very sensitive issue for the state. We willalso know if Silvano will mark a before and after in the accountability of governors, being the first to be brought down for corruption crimes in the 4T era. The former governors of Nayarit, Coahuila and Nuevo León were arrested in the six-year term of López Obrador, but at the request of past governments. Silvano's trial will be 100 percent the work of Morena, his former colleagues of the PRD left.
* Ami Gabriela Sosa Vera is a freelance journalist, distinguished from UNESCO's Pilot Program to Support Investigative Journalism (PPAPI) in 2021. She holds a Master's degree in Public Policy Journalism from CIDE, was a Legorreta Fellow in 2019 and earned a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Cultures from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2018.
* Concepción Peralta Silverio is an investigative journalist focused on social justice, human rights and anti-corruption issues, with a degree in journalism from UNAM and a master's degree in journalism and public policy from CIDE. She puts her talents at the service of the most vulnerable. Twitter: @CPeraltaS
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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