The properties of Marko Cortés Mendoza, Senator and leader of the PAN until 2024, have grown in tandem with the public positions he has held since 2005 and accusations of receiving resources that he has not clarified. He owns houses, land, a cabin, and apartments that in total have cost him more than 31 million pesos. As a PAN leader he did not make his assets transparent, an opacity that adds to other irregular episodes such as when he sought to govern Michoacán and admitted having received 70 million pesos from businessmen.
Mexico City, November 25 (However).– As leader of the National Action Party (PAN)and now with the position of multi-member Senator that he secured after the 2024 electoral failure, Marko Cortés Mendoza has been able expand your wealth. His political career shows that his resources grew alongside accusations of receiving millions of pesos whose use was not made transparent, as has been denounced even within the party itself.
Marko Cortés reported in the asset declaration that he presented in May before the Internal Comptroller of the Senate that in January 2025, four months after taking office, he bought an apartment in cash for 565 thousand euros, that is, about 12 million pesos. He did not detail where it is located.
Since August, Morenoist Senator Gerardo Fernández Noroña warned that Cortés acquired the property, he did so to defend himself against questions about buying a house in Tepoztlán for a similar amount in pesos.
Marko Cortés’s assets declaration for 2024 and 2025 is the only information available because during the six years he led the PAN he did not make his declarations public, despite it being an obligation established in the General Transparency Law.
Marko Cortés acknowledges being the owner of three apartments, four pieces of land, a commercial premises, two houses, a luxury car, and a cabin that in total would have cost 31 million 783 thousand 282 pesos.
In his most recent asset declaration, he does not specify whether among these properties are the two ranches dedicated to the cultivation of avocado that he has in Jalisco, as shown by certifications from the National Service of Health, Safety and Agri-Food Quality (Senasica) that were granted to him in 2022 and 2023. In addition, the panista owns two water concessions granted by Conagua, with a total capacity of 182 thousand cubic meters per year. year for agricultural use, one was granted in September 2016 and the other in October 2021.
In addition to the apartment that he paid in euros this 2025, the most expensive assets were acquired during his period as leader of the PAN, from November 2018 to November 2024. Two months after assuming the leadership, in January 2019, he bought a house that he paid on credit for 9 million pesos; At that time and until 2024, he received a net monthly salary of 156,571 pesos.
On June 24, 2022, he acquired land for 1 million 840 thousand 116 pesos, which he paid on credit. The purchase was made 19 days after the gubernatorial elections in six states where it competed in a coalition and only won in Aguascalientes.
During his time in the leadership, PAN members reproached Marko Cortés for not assuming his responsibility for leading the PAN to failure through the alliance with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the defunct Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
In 2018, it received the PAN with 11 states: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Puebla, Chihuahua, Durango, Nayarit, Aguascalientes, Tamaulipas, Guanajuato, Querétaro and Yucatán.
After the election on June 2, 2024 and processes in which he defended competing in a coalition, he only governs in four entities: Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes and Querétaro.
The accusations of yesteryear
Before assuming the leadership of the PAN, Marko Cortés was a federal representative, in 2011 he registered as a candidate for Governor of Michoacán, but was elected to be Cocoa Calderón –sister of the then President Felipe Calderón–. As a consolation prize, Cortés campaigned to be the Mayor of Morelia, the capital of Michoacán, in a process that earned him accusations from other PAN members for the use of irregular resources.
Juan José Rodríguez Prats, then president of the PAN Doctrine Commission, revealed that Marko Cortés admitted having received 70 million pesos from businessmen in 2011 when he was seeking the candidacy for governor of Michoacán. Reporter Álvaro Delgado exposed this situation in 2018, when Marko Cortés was seeking the leadership of the PAN. He explained that Rodríguez Prats spoke about it in a private conversation and later in a report submitted to the National Executive Committee of the PAN.
According to this data, Cortés did not deny receiving the money, but rather justified it by arguing that it was a “normal” act for businessmen to “bet on a candidate,” even insinuating that they could “receive something in return.”
Rodríguez Prats also confronted the PAN member in front of the then president of the party, Gustavo Madero, and the general secretary Cecilia Romero. Tomás Trueba Gracián, deputy general secretary of the CEN at that time, witnessed that session and confirmed that Marko Cortés admitted having received the resources, which he described as “normal” support for his candidacy. Although the fact was known by the PAN leadership since 2011, it remained unpunished.
Manuel Gómez Morin, who competed against Cortés for the leadership in 2018, returned to the confession to request his expulsion from the PAN before the party’s Order, Discipline and Anti-Corruption commissions, but the case did not advance.
In 2011, when Marko Cortés would have received the financial resources, he was a Senator for the first minority – from 2006 to 2011 -, a period in which he bought a house in cash for 423,817 pesos in September 2006, and a cabin for 370,204 pesos in February 2012.
Public_Declaration-markp-cortes-2024
Cortés has shown a pattern of downplaying questionable political deals. In January 2024, he uncovered agreements he reached with Alejandro Moreno for the distribution of positions in the Judiciary, notaries and autonomous bodies in Coahuila and defended these actions by ensuring that “in every democracy in the world, the most normal thing is for political agreements to be made.”
The opaque leadership of the PAN
In addition to electoral failures, his management at the head of the PAN was characterized by opacity.
From 2019 to 2024, the party did not make clear how much it paid in propaganda and social communication, but a review of the data from the Meta Ad Library (which integrates the social networks Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) carried out by However shows that both Marko Cortés and the party paid an estimated 5 million 531 thousand 857 pesos to disseminate 886 advertisements in the PAN member’s personal accounts, in addition to 37 thousand 414 dollars – about 685 thousand 137 pesos – for another 71 advertisements published only between 2020 and 2024.
Cortés Mendoza promoted his image until the last moment at the head of the PAN. In 2024, the presidential candidate and former senator of the party
In terms of transparency, it is also unknown how many public resources Marko Cortés used for his different tours in Mexico, Latin America and Europe. Since 2019, his first year at the head of the PAN, until 2024 the party allocated at least 57 million 692 thousand 684 pesos in travel expenses for activities inside and outside the country; Of that amount, 7 million 845 thousand pesos were used for travel expenses for the leadership and members of the General Secretariat.
But one year after he left the leadership, the PAN has not released complete information about the resources allocated to Marko Cortés’ international trips. For example, his last international tour was to Spain in October 2024, where he met with politicians from the Popular Party. In July of that year, he and a delegation visited Venezuela to make a “diagnosis of democracy in Latin America and analyze the consequences of populism”, from where he was deported to Peru.
Our full support to the Venezuelan people so that they vote freely, without pressure🇻🇪 As an international community, we will ensure from wherever we are that their human rights are respected, their guarantees in the electoral process, so that it is transparent, peaceful and the regime… pic.twitter.com/sSpPsW36HT
— National Action (@AccionNacional) July 28, 2024
Before, he traveled to Colombia accompanied by Mariana Gómez del Campo, secretary of international affairs of the PAN, to meet with the Conservative Party of that country. Regarding these trips, there is no public information about the accommodation, food and land transportation of Marko Cortés and the entourage that accompanied him.
Another international departure for which the expenses are unknown was in September 2022 through Belgium and Germany, there Cortés Mendoza sought a statement from the European Parliament against an “authoritarian regime” in Mexico.