Within the 2012 Public Account report, PRD Senator Dolores Padierna claimed that the Secretary of Energy, Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, could incur in a conflict of interests by being linked to companies in the energy sector. As a matter of fact, on May 28th and in the Permanent Commission in Congress, the legislator requested the permanent removal of Coldwell from his post, as well as all public officers that “could be related to similar operations as their attributions or, otherwise, inform about the reasons why a conflict of interests might be prevented”.
It could be argued that the head of the Secretariat of Energy cannot be disregarded for being in a situation where he is not gaining any benefits from his current job, or in other words, he’s not in the middle of an influence peddling scenario. However, this does not eliminates the potential conflict of interests which he’s a part of. In addition, his motivation for acting is potentially corruptible by one of the several interests he represents. Although there has not been a record of abusing power from the position he is currently occupying but only the risk of him using to gain a personal benefit, there is not a punishable conduct regarding a potential dismissal. In any given case, even with a conflict of interests, it seems complicated that President Peña will fire someone that has been a key factor within the relations of the Executive and Legislative powers, not with the opposition but with PRI. It also has to be considered that the request for removing Coldwell comes from the party that has been most critical of the process of energetic liberalization. But the most important thing is not the request itself but looking for distractions in order to avoid the approval of secondary legislation or, most likely, skew its content towards keeping the energetic industry’s status quo (or whatever comes close to it) with PRD’s vote; that is to say, keeping PEMEX as the industry’s factotum.
The corruption potential within the oil industry is not new and is not exclusive of the current party in power. Due to the magnitude of its operations, the energy sector is a “breeding ground” for the ownership of economic rents. Let’s remember two recent cases. The first one, the deceased Juan Camilo Mouriño, who was head of the Energy Commission at the Chamber of Deputies and signed PEMEX contracts that favored the company Ivancar, who was owned by his family. The second one deals with the Oceanografía company. Although that the investigation has been kept under the deepest secrecy and that all links of the aforementioned company with some members of the Mexican political class have been disregarded, the hot-button issue relies in the fact that some credit rating agencies had warned PEMEX about the high probability of non-payment that the company had. Looking into the future, the red flag is even more notorious when taking into account that, after the Oceanografía scandal, the same credit agency stated that PEMEX still has contracts with other stakeholders that have the same risk conditions as Oceanografía did.
Due to its high degree of specialization, the Mexican energy sector is directed by several individuals that have been on both sides of the fence, that is to say, in private companies that have had contracts with PEMEX as well as government dependencies such as the Secretariat of Energy, Public Finance, Communications and Transports as well as PEMEX itself. Conflicts of interests might not scare away foreign investors that are used to deal with these sorts of “particular institutional fabric” in other countries. However, this does not mean that the government should not take its precautions, since what it is at stake is not only the allocation of resources within the sector, but the efficiency of the latter. Conflicts of interest could end in subprime contract biddings that will create greater production costs and fewer benefits for Mexico.
CIDAC
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