Late last year a dossier translated into English about a corruption case involving the former governor of Chihuahua, Javier Corral Jurado was delivered to an unknown number of news media in the U.S., including one of our sister publications. In the December 2, 2025, email that included the dossier, Fátima López, the daughter of José Pedro López Elías, writes that “high-ranking officials” in Chihuahua are fabricating a crime against her father “very likely for political purposes that may impact” future Mexican elections. López added in her email that her father is elderly and is under medical treatment for cancer. She went on to explain that officials have refused to allow her father to present evidence to contradict the various corruption cases against him virtually. It should be noted that the demand is to present exonerating evidence without having to attend court. A Chihuahua arrest warrant against López Elías has been pending since May 14, 2025, after he did not attend a hearing over the public corruption charges he faces.
At the center of the controversy is $98.6 million Mexican Pesos (about $5.5 million USD) of public monies that López Elías is accused of stealing from Chihuahua. According to Chihuahua State Anticorruption prosecutors, in July 2019, the López Elías Finanzas Públicas law firm, headed by the accused lawyer, was awarded the Chihuahua contract to restructure the state’s public debt. It was then Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral Jurado who contracted the law firm.
This is just one of two massive public corruption cases involving two back-to-back Chihuahua governors from two political parties – PAN and PRI – pointing fingers at each other with MORENA getting into the mix along the way.
Corral Jurado has said that the debt restructuring that cost Chihuahua $98.6 million Mexican Pesos saved the State of Chihuahua $7 million Mexican Pesos. However, public records show that the debt restructuring instead increased the state’s debt by $2.5 million Mexican Pesos as he has said.
Chihuahua prosecutors allege that the López Elías firm was paid for not doing any work.
But Corral Jurado, using his social media account, argued in 2024 that he and López Elías have been blocked by prosecutors from providing the evidence they say exonerates them. However, López Elías is in hiding and Corral Jurado is avoiding arrest by having himself appointed as a Senator by a party he had maligned as governor.
In May 2025, Chihuahua officials issued an Interpol Red Notice seeking the location of López Elías. The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) is an international organization that facilitates international police cooperation in criminal matters. There are no Interpol agents, rather Interpol provides infrastructure to national policy forces for criminal investigations that cross borders. Arrests of people wanted by police forces are conducted by the police of the country where the wanted individual is found. Rather than maintaining an active police force, Interpol is staffed with people who provide technical support, like computer experts to facilitate the database of international crimes and two response teams to respond to disasters or to support in a major criminal incident in a member country.
Best known for its Red Notices, Interpol uses them to alert different national police forces of fugitives that may be in their country. The Red Notice is not an arrest warrant, but rather an alert describing the person a national police force is looking for and the crime or crimes they have been accused of. When a fugitive is located, it is the local police that decide whether to detain the individual or not.
What Does the Dossier Say?
The 43-page dossier, dated September 2025 argues that the corruption prosecution of López Elías is “the fabrication of a crime, very likely for political purposes.” López Elías writes in the dossier that he and his company face “media lynching without even conducting a lawful investigation into the case.”
In the dossier, López Elías argues that his firm saved the State of Chihuahua $7.5 billion Mexican Pesos, or $402 million USD according to the dossier’s calculations. [see note below] The dossier states that “five public bids were conducted with banking institutions (emphasis in original) and 81 legal instruments (emphasis in original) were executed, including contracts, amended agreements, and letters of confirmation.” It adds that 18 banks participated in the 2019 refinancing of Chihuahua’s public debt. It also says that the law firm provided a 23-volume Documentary Report to the Chihuahua government.
The dossier adds that prosecutors have not requested the documents the dossier says exist for the refinancing project. The dossier does not include copies of the documents it says exonerate López Elías.
According to the dossier, the prosecution stems from a “suspiciously ordered” second audit of the public debt project in 2022. A second audit was ordered by Corral Jurado. It adds that the second audit focused on the firm headed by López Elías. Based on the second audit, the dossier argues that Chihuahua state anticorruption prosecutors filed charges against him, even though he had requested numerous times before the charges were filed to clarify the allegations made in the audit report – that the firm was paid even though it performed no work on the debt restructuring contract.
López Elías says in the dossier that Chihuahua prosecutors were “funding media coverage” about the case and that they have “flown drones over my home” as part of their plan to discredit him.
In addition to accusing the prosecutors of not reviewing the documents that López Elías says exist that exonerate him – which he did not provide in the dossier – he argues that the second audit, the basis of which he is being prosecuted was illegally ordered. He outlines several violations of the Mexican Constitution he says the audit violates.
The dossier’s narrative closes by alleging that López Elías is a “senior citizen with an acute health condition,” adding because of his age and health he has requested “special consideration from the authorities of Chihuahua.” The dossier ends with “we are confident that, at the conclusion” of the investigation, “justice will prevail.”
Although the dossier goes to great lengths to layout the timeline of the process and references hundreds of pages of documents that it says exonerate López Elías, the documents allegedly exonerating him are not included in the dossier. Chihuahua officials have said they have not found any documents showing that López Elías or his firm produced any work for the amount they were paid. Officials have also been unable to confirm any savings from the public debt restructuring and instead say the amount owed increased.
Problematic for any outside observer is that the López Elías family goes to great lengths to produce and disseminate a dossier they say exonerates their father but do not provide the documents they allege will prove his innocence. Additionally, the father has refused to address the charges in court, blaming his absence on health issues that cannot be verified independently.
López Elías remains a fugitive today. But a former Chihuahua governor who is accused of giving him the contract to refinance Chihuahua’s public debt also faces criminal charges related to the case, but refuses to rebut the accusations in court, instead relying on congressional privilege to avoid being arrested.
The Former Governor of Chihuahua
The alleged fraud committed by López Elías needed the Chihuahua state government to allow it by giving them the contract to restructure the state’s public debt. It was then Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral Jurado that allegedly gave the law firm the contract, that according to state anticorruption prosecutors, was paid $98.6 million Mexican Pesos for not doing any work and ended up costing the state over $2 million Pesos.
Corral, who was governor of Chihuahua from 2016 to 2021, ran as a member of the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN). In December 2023, Corral switched his party affiliation to Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (MORENA) after joining the Claudia Sheinbaum campaign saying that Sheinbaum “will know how to lead the country to a better stage,” of “political understanding.”
On August 14, 2024, while dining at a Mexico City restaurant, Corral was nearly arrested on the corruption allegations allegedly stolen from Chihuahua through the debt restructuring contract.
Sitting alongside Corral, as Chihuahua officials attempted to arrest him, was Muna Dora Buchahin. She is a long-term anticorruption activist. She has said that the attempt to arrest Corral was “illegal” which she says bolsters his case that he is being persecuted over the alleged misuse of Chihuahua public monies. Corral was not arrested after he sought the intervention of Ulises Lara López, at the time the head of the Mexico City prosecutor’s office. According to Lara López, someone from Corral’s group called him from the restaurant to tell him Chihuahua officials were attempting to arrest the former Chihuahua governor. Lara López went to the restaurant, as his explains on a video he posted about the incident, to verify the arrest warrant personally.
After concluding that the arrest warrant did not meet the legal standard, Corral and he left to go to the prosecutor’s office to ascertain if a valid arrest warrant in Mexico City had been issued. Since an arrest warrant had not been issued in Mexico City, Corral was allowed to leave.
According to Lara López, the Chihuahua arrest warrant was received in Mexico City “only minutes,” before Chihuahua officials attempted to arrest Corral. Because the warrant had not yet been processed in Mexico City, the Chihuahua officials did not have the necessary authority to make the arrest in Mexico City, according to the Mexico City prosecutor.
Corral Appointed Senator
Days after the attempt to arrest him in Mexico City, Corral was appointed a senator for the State of Chihuahua by the MORENA party leadership. Since September 1, 2024, Corral could no longer be arrested by Chihuahua officials because he enjoys immunity for common crimes. In the case of corruption, the Senate must first vote to remove the immunity from one of its members. The Mexican Senate (Cámara de Senadores) has 128 members elected to six-year terms. Ninety-six senators are elected, three for each state and 32 are appointed by parties proportionally to their election results in the last election. Corral is a proportional appointment by MORENA.
Corral was first a senator in 2000 representing the State of Chihuahua under the PAN. He served until 2006. He served a second term as senator between 2012 to 2018 before being elected governor of Chihuahua, also under the PAN banner.
Criminal corruption charges against Corral remain open. PAN party officials, meanwhile, have labeled Corral a traitor for joining MORENA. But Corral was not always supportive of MORENA, until it became convenient.
AMLO Represents Hate Said Javier Corral
In an interview in 2020, Javier Corral accused Andrés Manuel López Obrador – who formed the MORENA party and is colloquially known as AMLO – of “representing hate.” AMLO was president of México from 2018 to 2024. The conflict between Corral and AMLO began around 2020 over the water transfers between the U.S. and México under the 1944 water treaty between the countries. Corral accused AMLO of forcefully taking Chihuahua’s water to satisfy the water transfers to the U.S. under the treaty. Corral said the water was needed by Chihuahua farmers during the drought at the time. However, by July 2021, Corral and AMLO had settled their differences and began working towards addressing public corruption in México, according to both.
On November 8, 2023, Corral, after 44 years of working with the PAN, switched his party allegiance to AMLO’s party – MORENA. Days before, then presidential candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, also of MORENA, announced that she had added Corral to her campaign. His job, according to Sheinbaum, was to address public corruption.
Before ending his governor’s term with a low 11% approval rating, the PAN leadership had added Corral to the party’s potential candidates for president in 2024. The PAN, instead, selected Xóchitl Gálvez as the party’s candidate.
On February 7, 2025, Corral, who heads the Commission on Justice promised that the anticorruption measures promised by Sheinbaum during the campaign through him would be introduced at the senate in the “coming weeks.” He has not.
One would be tempted to believe the story ends there, but the finger-pointing and party-political allegiances bring in another former Chihuahua governor into the drama, and a murdered journalist adds to the intrigue.
Corral’s Predecessor Runs To El Paso as an Interpol Red Notice Is Issued
In 2021, Corral was accused of psychological torture in another corruption case involving another Chihuahua governor, his predecessor, César Duarte Jáquez. Durate, a member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) party was investigated at the behest of Corral for public corruption.
After leaving office, Duarte fled to El Paso in May 2016. Around 2017, Duarte and his wife moved to Florida where they lived in an exclusive Miami condominium complex. Duarte was arrested on July 8, 2020, by U.S. Marshals at a used auto parts store buying a tire. He and his wife had opened two businesses in Miami, a laundromat and a used car business.
In 2021, Duarte issued an open letter addressed to Corral. In it, Duarte wrote that Corral “is a liar, always perversely hiding his foreign birth.” Corral was born in El Paso, Texas but had said that he was born in Cd. Juárez. Corral was born in El Paso but had stated he was born in Cd. Juárez based on a false birth registration filed by his mother in Juárez seven years after he was born. A second birth registration was filed in 1991 for Corral attesting he was, in fact, born in El Paso. In 2022, Corral acknowledged his dual citizenship arguing that he never lied about being born in El Paso.
Duarte’s letter went on to add that because of his birth in El Paso, “you [Corral] should never have accepted public office, violating the law.” [letter contents translate from Spanish by author]
After he was arrested, Duarte was returned to México, Duarte has been in an out of jail citing health issues since then. Last year he was arrested in Chihuahua by federal prosecutors and taken to Mexico City to face public corruption charges in a case involving $100 million taken from the State of Chihuahua while he was governor.
He remains in jail awaiting trial.
His wife was arrested on Monday in El Paso, Texas by immigration agents.
But the intrigue does not end with a former governor accused of stealing $100 million and another governor having a hand in stealing $5.5 million in illicit payments.
The Case of Maru Campos
As a result of the Duarte investigation, Cristopher James Barousse alleged in 2021 that after he was put in jail, he would be taken to the infirmary where he would be pressured to sign documents that alleged that María Eugenia “Maru” Campos Galván was receiving state funds illegally. She ran for Chihuahua governor in the 2021 elections. On June 6, 2021, she secured enough votes, 42.45% to become governor of Chihuahua. Corral refused to accept her victory. In January 2021 she was accused of public corruption under Duarte. She accused Corral of orchestrating her prosecution. The judge overseeing the corruption case ruled that the prosecutors failed to prove her guilt, ending the case. She was sworn in on September 8, 2021, becoming the first women governor of Chihuahua.
Today she heads the Chihuahua State Security Coordination Table for Peacebuilding, a federal initiative connecting state governments with the federal government to unify state and federal security across the country.
After a judge ended her case in 2021 after not finding enough evidence to convict her, allegations of illicit funds resurfaced again this year against Maru Campos.
Earlier this month, her home became controversially dubbed the “Mansión Dorada,” or the golden mansion after an investigation by SinEmbargo, a Mexico City newspaper revealed that the house has luxurious floors and a chandelier in a bathroom that is covered by gold sheets, among other luxuries. According to the newspaper, the house is valued at around $31 million Mexican Pesos (about $1.7 million USD).
As for Barousse, the director of Red de Jóvenes por México, was accused of receiving $2.6 million Mexican Pesos (around $146,000 USD) from the Duarte administration. According to him, prison officials would take him to infirmary at four in the morning where there were no cameras and demand that he sign documents stating that he saw Duarte give Maru Campos money. He says he refused. Barousse said it was Corral who ordered the psychological torture of him and others.
He was conditionally released from jail in March 2021 to await trial. On March 7, 2024, a judge ruled that he did not illegally receive money from Duarte. Last year, Maru Campos appointed him as rector of the Universidad Politécnica de Chihuahua, where he remains today.
In November 2025, Germán Abraham Loera Acosta, also accused Corral of torture.
In a video posted on November 21, 2025, by the defense team for Loera, he accused Corral of the systematic torture of hundreds of people. He says in the video that several people were detained on March 2, 2018, by Chihuahua agents who tortured them “brutally.” In 2020 Loera was sentenced to 50 years in prison for being part of six men who kidnapped a woman and held her captive until police rescued her. He remains in jail today.
In November 2022, Francisco González Arredondo, who worked under Corral as a human rights investigator, was arrested on charges of torturing people who allegedly received illicit money from Chihuahua funds under Duarte.
But the intrigue around Corral would not end with torture and corruption.
The Murdered Journalist
On March 23, 2017, journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea was killed by gunman in front of her house in Chihuahua. A group of journalists launched an investigation into her murder.
The journalist, Breach Velducea, was shot eight times in front of her home in Chihuahua on March 23, 2017. When she was killed, she was investigating drug traffickers working with politicians in northern México. Pressured to drop her story by the news outlets she appeared on, she warned her former boyfriend, the recently elected governor of Chihuahua, Javier Corral Jurado of the threats she was being subjected to.
In addition to writing for La Jornada, Breach also published stories on El Norte de Ciudad Juárez under the pseudonym – Don Mirone.
Among the people suspected of killing her – there were many because of her hard-hitting drug cartel coverage – was César Duarte. Notably, Breach was not afraid to name politicians suspected of being involved with criminal gangs in her stories. The last article she wrote, who many suspected led to her murder, was about how the drug cartels had infiltrated the political class in various Chihuahua municipalities. She died a month after the article was published.
A few weeks before she was killed, she reached out to her former boyfriend, Corral, about the threats she was enduring. Although Corral promised to investigate the threats, she doubted that he would do so, she had told friends.
When asked about it at a press conference after her murder, Corral lied about when he had spoken to her. He said it had been two years before, while evidence clearly showed it was only a few weeks before. Corral, nonetheless, said that he also believed that the drug cartels had infiltrated several municipalities in Chihuahua. But Breach had confided in her family and friends that she had lost trust in Corral, because she provided him with confidential information she uncovered about corrupt municipal politicians and he did nothing about them.
One year after her murder, her brothers complained about Corral. They say he told them that she died because “she had played with fire,” suggesting that the journalist should not have investigated the narco-cartel political connections in Chihuahua.
Although one person, Juan Carlos Moreno Ochoa, is serving 50 years in jail for the murder, the investigators have been criticized for not investigating the people she wrote about in her columns before she was killed, especially the politicians she had named. The gunman, Ramón Andrés Zavala Corral, had committed suicide before he could be arrested.
El Paso Becomes a Haven for Ill-Gotten Chihuahua Money
For many years corrupt politicians fleeing Mexican justice find El Paso the perfect place to reset before moving on. Forbes contributor, Dolia Estevez who covers politics and finances in México among other topics told the Texas Standard in 2017 that El Paso works because of the proximity and the relaxed approach by law enforcement that allows bankers, lawyers and real estate agents to work with corrupt politicians. As an example, despite his pending arrest warrant, pictures of Duarte shopping for a new pickup truck at an El Paso dealership surfaced on social media in late March 2017. An Interpol Red Notice had also been issued for him while he was shopping for the truck. It was no secret that he was in El Paso – Corral had told the news media in Chihuahua where he could be found, but Texas officials remained oblivious to his presence.
Estevez added that immigration officials are well aware of where people like Duarte can be found and yet ignore their presence, even with an Interpol Red Notice active. She added, “it takes two to tango,” and “you can’t just have one side that is corrupt, one side where all the problems are, like drugs and so forth,” and not have the same problems on the other side. She explained that “these people can get away with so much in Texas,” because “there’s a whole system that supports them.”
Corrupt politicians are running from the law, usually with pockets full of stolen public monies. Money buys a willingness to pretend that house or pickup truck paid with wads of cash is legal money. Cash in El Paso opens doors because El Pasoans focus on their profits after the sales are concluded. Wondering where the money came from is just a problem they like to ignore. Likewise, El Paso law enforcement tends to turn a blind eye to Interpol Red Notice because it adds drama to El Paso’s supposed safe city designation.
César Duarte is in jail awaiting trial, his wife sits in an immigration detention center in El Paso wondering if she will be joining her husband in a Mexican court, meanwhile some of the stolen money is in properties across El Paso where family members are enjoying them today. As for Javier Corral, his senatorial seat keeps him out of jail for the moment but the case against him remains open.
Note on dossier’s savings calculations: The dossier notes a “savings and freed-up cash flows totaling $7,483,801,665.88 (USD 402,301,164.83) to the benefit of the State of Chihuahua.”
