Two years ago, Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas left the governorship of Campeche amidst scandals over rising public debt and accusations of unexplained wealth. Before moving on to lead the national PRI, he designed a State Anti-Corruption System, an entity that has cost the state over 200 million pesos and has delivered no tangible results.
In June 2019, Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas, known as “Alito,” abandoned the governorship without presenting his fourth report and moved to Mexico City to preside over the PRI. At the time, his unexplained wealth was already under scrutiny, including a multimillion-peso mansion in the exclusive Lomas del Castillo subdivision, visible only through satellite imagery.
That same year, his party colleague Ulises Ruiz, former governor of Oaxaca, filed a complaint against Moreno Cárdenas with the Attorney General’s Office, though no legal action was pursued.
In Campeche, Moreno faced criticism for the ballooning public debt, which grew from 812 million pesos to 2.37 billion during his tenure due to grandiose projects that never materialized. Simultaneously, poverty increased: between the second and third years of his administration, overall poverty rose from 43.8% to 46.2%, and extreme poverty climbed from 6.7% to 9.8%, according to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL).
Before leaving to lead the national PRI, Moreno designed a State Anti-Corruption System (SEA). However, the system became mired in bureaucracy, failing to produce a local anti-corruption policy that would set guidelines for preventing, combating, and penalizing corruption in the state.
As required by the General Law of the National Anti-Corruption System, Moreno submitted a bill to the state legislature in July 2017 to create the Campeche State Anti-Corruption System Law. This was approved without debate. The legislative committee overseeing its passage was chaired by Moreno’s cousin, Laura Baqueiro Ramos, who is set to serve her third term as a local congresswoman.
The SEA also required the creation of the State Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (FAE), which was granted “autonomy and its own budget.” However, the head of the office was appointed to a 15-year term, effectively spanning two and a half gubernatorial administrations.
According to the law, the legislature must select the anti-corruption prosecutor from candidates proposed by civic organizations. Among 15 candidates (10 men and 5 women), José Ángel Paredes Echavarría, a known favorite, was appointed. Paredes, a former president of the State Superior Court of Justice, was expected to serve until 2033 but passed away on August 8, 2019.
In October of that year, there was an attempt to appoint José Alberto Calderón Silva, a cousin of “Alito,” as prosecutor. Calderón had previously served under Moreno as head of Campeche’s Institute for Access to Justice and was linked to several district electoral councilors responsible for the 2021 gubernatorial and local legislative elections.
Like other candidates for the FAE, Calderón underwent interviews with a special legislative committee, which included PRI member Ana Gabriela Sánchez Preve and Álvar Ortiz Azar, a relative of Moreno and then head of the Green Party in the state. However, intense public and media backlash forced the interim governor, Carlos Miguel Aysa González—Moreno’s former secretary of government—to abandon Calderón’s nomination. Instead, Silvia Moguel Ortiz, a vice prosecutor under Paredes, was appointed.
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