Breathe
By Luisa Cantú Ríos
The Mexico City District Attorney's Office has arrested six people in recent months for possible real estate corruption and has five other arrest warrants pending, the crimes of which they are accused are, for example, "improper use of powers and faculties" or "criminal association". This is undoubtedly a step forward, but it is insufficient given the magnitude of the problem in Mexico City: these practices not only enrich politicians, they kill people.
On Saturday, April 2, 2022, Mrs. Claudia Guadarrama tried to contact her daughter, also named Claudia, by telephone. After several calls that sent her to voicemail, she went to her apartment.
Upon arriving at the "Alpes Residencial" complex, located in the Álvaro Obregón district, the doorman confirmed that the young woman had arrived home the night before, accompanied by her boyfriend. He advanced towards number 1001 and noticed that the smell of gas was getting stronger and stronger.
Claudia Deschamps Guadarrama and Gustavo Juárez Santillán died of intoxication due to a bad installation of the chimney that was supposed to remove the fumes from the boiler -which also had a label indicating that it should be installed outdoors-, that is to say, a construction flue. This was determined by the forensic chemistry expert Carlos Enriquez and it is recorded in the investigation file opened more than a year ago with no concrete results.
The first corruption in this case is obvious: the pipes must be in a ventilated place that prevents the accumulation of toxic gases, as dictated by NOM 002-SECRE-2010. But in the HGB Desarrollos complexes the heaters are inside. It is only necessary to review the plans of the multiple projects they have in Mexico City to corroborate that thousands of people could be in the same danger as the couple.
The authorities should have detected this but did not because they did not verify that the construction was done according to the law, or so it seems.
The Public Prosecutor's Office investigating the case asked the Mayor's Office of Álvaro Obregón for information to determine responsibilities and it turned out that there are no fundamental documents such as the Manifestation of Construction, the Special Construction License, the Notice of Completion of Work or the Authorization of Use and Occupancy of the property... or at least the General Director of Work and Urban Development responded via official letter CDMX/AAO/DGODU/0007/2023 that he could not find them.
This means that the mayor's office knows that the building has irregularities and has done nothing about it. The Mexico City government also knows because my colleague from La Octava Noticias, César Cervantes, exposed the case directly to Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum in a press conference. No authority has done anything and, in the meantime, HGB Desarrollos is already selling the apartments in Tower 2 of this same complex.
#JusticeForClaudia.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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