Mexican state's ex-governor is accused of embezzlement

A former Mexican border state governor funneled millions of dollars in laundered money through U.S. bank accounts, part of a scheme to embezzle money from government coffers and hide it in Texas and offshore, U.S. prosecutors have alleged in federal court filings.

In a civil lawsuit filed Tuesday in Corpus Christi, prosecutors asked a judge to forfeit $2.8 million in a Bermuda investment account they say belongs to Jorge Juan Torres Lopez, 59, who served as the interim governor of Coahuila for most of 2011.

The lawsuit alleges that Torres conspired with Hector Javier Villarreal, the state's former treasurer who prosecutors allege laundered tens of millions of dollars in real estate investments in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, to use Texas bank accounts to wire embezzled money from Mexico through the United States to offshore accounts.

Neither Torres' attorney J.A. “Tony” Canales nor a spokesman for the state of Coahuila responded to phone calls seeking comment.

Torres and his wife, Maria Carlota Llaguno de Torres, own a Texas company called Toya LLC, and that company owns an empty lot and a 5,000-square-foot home overlooking the course at Marriott's Grand Pines Golf Club in Montgomery, near Houston. Torres' family has owned real estate in Texas for many years and are known as “the richest in Saltillo,” Coahuila's capital, said Luis Rayet, a Saltillo business owner who has houses in San Antonio and bought a home in Montgomery from Torres.

Rayet said Torres owns Grupo Industrial Saltillo, which is involved in construction, automotive parts and residential furnishings, employs about 9,000 people and is traded on the Mexican stock exchange.

He also said Torres owns property in the U.S., but “I don't know where or how much.”

“Our association was relative,” Rayet said. “I don't know him to be crooked, nor do I believe that he is crooked. I haven't seen him in about two years.”

Torres hired Villarreal in 2005, when Torres was the state treasurer, according to the lawsuit. In 2008, after Torres moved on to other things, Villarreal succeeded him.

Torres took over as interim governor in 2011, when Humberto Moreira stepped down to head the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Moreira, whose brother was elected to his old seat in Coahuila, eventually had to step down as head of the national party after the embezzlement scandal broke.

Between 2008 and Villarreal's resignation in August 2011, Mexican authorities allege, Villarreal racked up 3 billion pesos, about $250 million, in fraudulent loans using the state's credit. Shortly after his arrest in Mexico in October 2011, Villarreal was released on bail and entered the U.S. on a tourist visa. In February 2012, he was arrested in Smith County carrying $67,000, but was released again and hasn't resurfaced.

In 2008, Villarreal and Torres met with J.P. Morgan Chase bankers about opening accounts in the U.S., according to the lawsuit, which includes an affidavit by an Internal Revenue Service agent.

Their behavior caused J.P. Morgan Chase to launch an investigation, according to the lawsuit. Some of that behavior included Torres telling a bank official that as a public official he “could not have details about (his) property disclosed in Mexico or the public,” his request that statements be sent to the banker's home address in Brownsville, and Torres and Villarreal wiring in millions of dollars from Mexico, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars back and forth between each others' accounts and then sending the money to Bermuda.

Last year, federal and Bexar County prosecutors filed a series of lawsuits seeking tens of millions of dollars in bank accounts and in real estate in San Antonio, Brownsville, Harlingen and South Padre Island that they said Villarreal had bought with embezzled money.

In February, prosecutors filed a lawsuit to forfeit $2.3 million in a Bermuda account they say is controlled by Villarreal. Two weeks later, according to Tuesday's lawsuit, Torres tried to transfer the money in his Bermuda account to an account in Germany.