Alejandro Gertz Manero He is a lawyer from the Escuela Libre de Derecho and a Doctor of Law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, from the University of Mount Union in Ohio, USA and from the University of the Americas, AC, according to his own profile published on the official platform of the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic.
Until this Thursday, at 86 years old, he served as Attorney General of the Republic (FGR), after having been elected on January 18, 2019, by the Senate of the Republic, as the first Attorney General after the institutional transformation that converted the former Attorney General’s Office (PGR) into an Autonomous Prosecutor’s Office, during the beginning of the administration of the current former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He was expected to remain in office for nine years, that is, until 2028.
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He began his career as an agent of the Federal Public Ministry in the 1970s, and since then he has held various public positions: he was general secretary of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), federal attorney for the defense of labor, Senior Officer of the former PGR, first National Coordinator of the campaign against drug trafficking, among others.
Among the positions he has held in matters of public security, Gertz Manero served as Secretary of Public Security of the Federal District and, later, first Secretary of Federal Public Security under the presidency of Vicente Fox (2000–2004), while, in the legislative field, he was a federal deputy from 2009 to 2012 for the Convergencia party, today Movimiento Ciudadano, serving as president of the Navy Commission.
His profile on the FGR platform also states that Alejandro Gertz has been a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico; He was Professor of Criminal Procedure Law at the University of the Americas AC (UDLA), and served as Secretary General of the National Institute of Anthropology and History.
In accordance with the Law of the Attorney General of the Republic, as head of this federal agency, his functions were to direct and coordinate the policy of the institution, investigate and prosecute federal crimes, and seek effective justice. This includes the investigation of criminal acts, the representation of society in trials, the promotion and protection of the rights of victims, and the prevention of crime.
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A management full of accusations
However, during his administration, Alejandro Gertz Manero was frequently singled out on three main fronts: patrimonial opacity, political and personal use of the Prosecutor’s Office and poor performance in the judicialization of files.
Investigations by civil and journalistic organizations have reported that Gertz is the owner of properties valued at millions of euros in Spain, supposedly controlled through companies, in addition to the fact that he has refused to make public his asset declaration.
Cases have also been reported in which the FGR, under his command, acted in matters that involved political associates or adversaries, and have documented complaints filed against his entourage by alleged influence networks. In 2022–2023, public complaints were reported about influence peddling and procedural decisions “with conflicts of interest”, as in the case of his sister-in-law, Alejandra Cuevas.
He was called out for allegedly favoring cases such as the rapid exoneration of General Salvador Cienfuegos and the allegations of conflict of interest in the case of the University of the Americas (UDLA), as well as for intervening in the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa Case.
During his management he would also have inherited key cases for the public administration, such as “The Master Scam” or the Odebretch case, however, The investigations carried out by the federal agency failed to recover the resources lost in these million-dollar frauds.
Mexicans Against Corruption also severely criticized him by stating that only a minimal fraction of the investigation files initiated by the FGR under his management advance to the judicial stage (reports that indicate figures close to 4% in certain periods), and that millions of files remain under investigation or in a backlog, which questions the institutional effectiveness under his leadership.
Among his most recent criticisms was the one related to the discovery of Rancho Izaguirre, in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, where he not only stated that there were no traces of crematorium ovens at the site as the families members of the Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco collective had reported, In addition, the FGR organized a visit to the ranch in which the scenes at the site were supposed to be analyzed, but it ended up being “a walk like a museum of horror”, without organization or leadership, which ended up re-victimizing the searching families, as documented by groups and organizations in favor of human rights.
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