[ad_1]
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador shared the contact information of a New York Times reporter during an hours-long press conference on Thursday, drawing immediate condemnation from the newspaper for his apparent intimidation tactics. Ta.
Journalist Natalie Kitroev recently asked López Obrador for information about a previously unreported U.S. investigation that allegedly uncovered links between the president’s inner circle and powerful Mexican drug cartels. .
Nearly an hour after the press conference, Mr. López Obrador displayed an email from Mr. Kitroev on the screen behind him, which included the phone number she had listed as a contact. He read out the entire email, including the phone number, stopping occasionally to add his own commentary. It was not immediately clear whether the number was Mr. Kitroev’s personal line or a general number for the Times bureau, which covers Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, which he heads.
The New York Times published an article Thursday afternoon by Mr. Kitroev and Alan Feuer, insinuating that: statement X said López Obrador’s stunt was intended to have a chilling effect on the press.
“This is a troubling and unacceptable tactic by a world leader at a time when threats against journalists are on the rise,” a spokesperson for the paper said.
Kitroev and Feuer said the U.S. government discovered that some of Mexico’s president’s top aides and advisers received millions of dollars in payments from drug cartels while in office. One source claimed that two of the president’s allies received $4 million from the founder of the Zetas drug cartel, part of a payoff they hoped would lead to his release. .
Another official told investigators that cartel members had footage of the president’s sons picking up drug money. No formal investigation was opened against López Obrador because no direct link was found between the cartel and the president, and the probe was put on hold, three people told the Times.
President López Obrador on Thursday called the allegations “completely false” and said news of the investigation would not affect relations between Mexico and the United States “in any way.”
Last month, President López Obrador denounced a series of reports about a U.S. investigation that found millions of dollars were funneled by drug traffickers to his first presidential campaign in 2006. However, the jury is still out on whether López Obrador knew where the money was coming from.
“If they and their agencies are leaking information and harming me, how are we going to sit down at the table and talk about the war on drugs,” he asked at a news conference.
[ad_2]
Source link
