Alejandro Gertz Manero insisted on the arrest of his relatives during the time he was Attorney General of the Republic, a case that advanced in the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office, while accumulating unresolved cases of national interest in the FGR.
Mexico City, November 29 (However).– “I was a victim of arbitrary detention, a consequence of institutional persecution led by Alejandro Gertz Manero“This is how he described Alejandra Cuevas Moranniece-in-law of former Attorney General of the Republicthe more than 500 days she spent deprived of liberty without a sentence for a crime she did not commit. The case showed how Gertz Manero abused his position to undertake a personal vendetta, something that, according to the Cuevas Moran family, was advanced with the complicity of the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office.
Alejandra Cuevas Moran She was detained at the Santa Martha Acatitla Women’s Social Reintegration Center, south of the city, in October 2020 due to a complaint that Gertz Manero filed against her and her mother, Laura Morán, for “homicide due to carelessness.”
He accused them both of the death of his brother Federico Gertz in 2015. Since August of that year, a process began in the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office, and although the agency did not find elements to carry out criminal proceedings, Alejandro Gertz promoted review resources and in 2020, already as Attorney General of the Republic, the city’s Prosecutor’s Office, then headed by Ernestina Godoy, requested an arrest warrant against Alejandra Cuevas, which was executed despite the fact that she had a legal suspension.
Alonso Castillo Cuevas, son of Alejandra Cuevas and grandson of Laura Morán, has since accused before the media that Prosecutor Gertz tried to extort his relatives to plead guilty. “[Gertz Manero] “used the Prosecutor’s Office to extort us, to demand statements from us about fabricated crimes,” he explained in January 2022 in an interview for the program The Journalistsof However On Air.
Two months later, the plenary session of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) analyzed the case and unanimously determined that it was incorrect to attribute the death of Federico Gertz to Alejandra under the legal figure of “accessory guarantor” because it is a figure that does not exist in the laws; She also concluded that, although she collaborated with her mother in some of the care tasks, there was no evidence that she agreed to take care of Federico, make decisions about his care, or live with him.
After that resolution and remaining detained for 527 days, Alejandra Cuevas was released on March 28, 2022. The Court’s resolution also served to exonerate Laura Morán, who was being investigated for the same case.
Given the accusations made to the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office that reactivated the case, the then head Ernestina Godoy justified the work of the agency in a message to the media, recalling that the preliminary investigation of the case was initiated in 2015 and that in the process, both the complainant and the accused, “always asserted their right to disagree with the presentation of testimonial evidence and expert evidence.”
The Prosecutor argued that the ministers of the SCJN “in no case did they maintain that the authorities had fabricated a crime or had manipulated the law,” nor did they say that the prosecution evidence “was false, or that it had been obtained illicitly or had been altered,” nor that there was irregular action by the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office.
Ernestina Godoy, recently appointed by Gertz Manero as head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Competence Control, a position that automatically places her at the head of the FGR in the absence of the head, then ruled out in an interview with Formula Radio that Alejandro Gertz pressured her to act in the case.
In the interview he acknowledged that at other times he had conversations with Alejandro Gertz to address specific issues, but not to agree to act in the Prosecutor’s family case.
The clarification was made after, before the SCJN’s resolution, an audio broadcast on social networks showed a conversation between Gertz Manero and Juan Ramos López, his right arm and Competition Control Prosecutor. In that audio Gertz claimed to have the project of Minister Alberto Pérez Dayán, which would go against keeping Alejandra Cuevas detained. In the talk he mentioned that he had had conversations with that Minister and with the then Minister President Arturo Zaldívar.
Alejandro Gertz justified himself by ensuring that it is “absolutely valid” to speak with the ministers and described the intervention of the call as “a form of extortion.”
Alonso Castillo spoke about these allegations in March 2024, in an interview for the program Close Upof However On Air. Alejandra Cuevas’ son suggested that it is rather Gertz Manero who is extorting, and also described him as an “extremely vengeful” man.
“It is proven, he is a man who violates human rights, who extorts, who uses all the mechanisms at his disposal to do his holy will and no one stops him,” he said.
Laura Morán, Gertz Manero’s former sister-in-law, died in February 2024 at the age of 96. At that time, her daughter Alejandra Cuevas announced that she would continue her search for justice.
On June 11, 2025, Alejandra Cuevas filed a complaint before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in which she accused former prosecutor Gertz Manero of using “the power of the State” to persecute her, her mother and her children, a situation that, she explained, forced them to leave the country once she obtained her freedom.
With the IACHR investigation, it seeks to get the Mexican Government, particularly the FGR, to admit its responsibility in the fabrication of crimes.
President Claudia Sheinbaum was questioned about this complaint and stated that the case against Alejandra Cuevas has already been clarified and resolved. The president believed that the SCJN resolved the matter at the time and that it was also clarified by the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office. Sheinbaum avoided recognizing the participation of the federal government.
–Would there be this recognition for the participation of the Prosecutor [Gertz Manero]? –he was asked at the morning conference on June 13 at the National Palace.
–It has to be clarified and I understand that at the time the Court resolved it, so I believe that it has already been clarified and it is already resolved –the President responded.
I was imprisoned for caring. My mother, for loving. My children, for resisting. Gertz pursued us with the power of the state. Today, before the IACHR, I denounce what he did: imprison one and bankrupt three generations. pic.twitter.com/cDfLWIIbBY
— Alejandra Cuevas Moran (@AleCuevasMoran) June 12, 2025
Although Alejandra Cuevas and Laura Morán were exonerated, the case stands out because it led to an arrest in Mexico City while other investigations into acts of corruption, such as the Master Scam, the Odebrecht case, the embezzlement in Pemex, the Ayotzinapa case or investigations against former president Enrique Peña Nieto did not advance during the almost seven years that Alejandro Gertz Manero was in charge of the FGR.