Sheinbaum denies scolding García Harfuch after WSJ report
The newspaper cited anonymous sources on a private meeting over frozen bank accounts. The president said at her morning press conference that she was not upset.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Oct. 7 that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was very harsh, in a private meeting at the National Palace, about plans to freeze the bank accounts of former officials tied to the Baja California state government, especially with Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch. Its sources are "people familiar with the discussion," whom it does not name. According to Vanguardia, spokespeople for both declined to comment.
The next day, at her morning press conference on Oct. 8, the president rejected that account. According to the official transcript from the Presidency, she said it was not a scolding but an instruction on how to do the work better. Latinus and Vanguardia attribute to her the words "I always scold everybody." According to both outlets, she said that "has nothing to do" with any annoyance on her part.
She neither confirmed nor ruled out the meeting, and did not discuss the account freeze in detail, according to Vanguardia. No official source has confirmed the meeting or an order to freeze accounts, and neither García Harfuch nor the Security Ministry has responded in what this outlet reviewed.
The WSJ says Sheinbaum asked whether her aides accepted the evidence from the United States, and that she authorized the freeze so as not to harm bilateral cooperation. That would have been shortly before the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned 21 people over alleged ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, according to Newsmax, via Yahoo, which reproduces the report. The original WSJ article is behind a paywall and was not reviewed, and the figure of 21 was not checked against the Treasury announcement.
At the same conference, the president also discussed sanctions by OFAC, the Treasury office that administers them, against companies such as Inteliproof, a separate case: she said Mexico's financial intelligence unit found "irregularities," but no proven link to criminal groups.
