{"id":34716,"date":"2023-05-04T18:54:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T18:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/mexico-president-defends-son\/"},"modified":"2023-05-04T18:55:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T18:55:56","slug":"mexico-president-defends-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/mexico-president-defends-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico president defends son after report alleging corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MEXICO CITY (Reuters) &#8211;     Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday defended one of his sons against corruption allegations, rejecting a media report that his son had used his position to help friends win millions of dollars worth of contracts.<\/p>\n<p>This week Mexican news outlet Latinus published a report alleging that Andres Lopez Beltran, a son of the president, had helped friends snare public contracts worth over 100 million pesos ($5.6 million).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My children are not corrupt,&#8221; Lopez Obrador told a regular government news conference, bringing up the story himself, and saying that the media had published several articles about his children which are &#8220;totally false.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Among contracts won by friends of Lopez Beltran was one to build an ecological park on the site of a partly built Mexico City airport that the government had abandoned, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>Lopez Obrador ditched the airport upon taking office in 2018 on the grounds that it was too costly and tainted by corruption.<\/p>\n<p>It also alleged friends of Lopez Beltran had staged sham competitions by bidding separately for projects using companies with the same owners, partners and addresses.<\/p>\n<p>Lopez Beltran could not immediately be reached for comment. <\/p>\n<p>Lopez Obrador acknowledged family friends had won government contracts, but said they posed no conflicts of interest. <\/p>\n<p>Mexicanos Contra la Corrupcion y la Impunidad, an anti-graft NGO, and Latinus raised questions last year about another son of Lopez Obrador when it reported that he had rented a home with his spouse from an executive of a U.S. oil services firm doing business with state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).<\/p>\n<p>Lopez Obrador denied any conflict of interest at the time.<\/p>\n<p>($1= 17.9150)<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Valentine Hilaire and Raul Cortes Fernandez; Editing by Josie Kao)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/mexico-president-defends-son\/file-photo-andres-manuel-lopez-beltran-the-son-of-leftist\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ430TF-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ430TF-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MEXICO CITY (Reuters) &#8211; Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday defended one of his sons against corruption allegations, rejecting a media report that his son had used his position to help friends win millions of dollars worth of contracts. This week Mexican news outlet Latinus published a report alleging that Andres Lopez Beltran, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":34717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ430TF-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34718,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34716\/revisions\/34718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}