Cancún, Quintana Roo — A federal judge has acquitted former Quintana Roo Governor Roberto Borge Angulo of organized crime charges, though he remains under house arrest in the State of Mexico while facing a separate money laundering case.
The ruling marks a significant legal setback for the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (FGR), which failed to prove that Borge led a criminal network that sold off 18 state-owned reserve plots in Cancún, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen, Tulum and Othón P. Blanco. Prosecutors alleged the land was worth 1.086 billion pesos but was sold for just 236 million pesos, causing an estimated 850 million pesos in damages.
The court also found no evidence linking alleged accomplices or that the purchasing companies were shell entities. Among the buyers named in the case was Borge’s mother, María Rosa Yolanda Angulo Castilla.
Borge, a former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governor, was arrested in Panama on June 4, 2017, while trying to board a flight to Paris. He was later extradited to Mexico to face charges including money laundering, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, abuse of office and organized crime. Nine years later, the most serious charge has collapsed.
The acquittal has drawn comparisons to another former Quintana Roo governor, Mario Villanueva Madrid, who was arrested in 2001 and sentenced for drug trafficking and organized crime. After more than two decades in Mexican and U.S. prisons, Villanueva was granted house arrest for health reasons but recently alleged authorities are trying to return him to a federal prison in Villa de Ayala, Morelos.
The case also casts a shadow on former Governor Carlos Joaquín González, now Mexico’s ambassador to Canada, whose administration pushed much of the legal and political offensive against Borge. Critics from Borge’s camp have long accused Joaquín of acting out of vengeance rather than legal rigor. The acquittal, they argue, shows the charges were poorly built rather than the accused being innocent.
Borge still faces a money laundering trial, but the collapse of the organized crime case has dealt a blow to the credibility of those who promised to deliver justice, observers say.
