The residence in Houston of the former director of Fonden, today a Morena candidate
José María Tapia, Morena candidate in Querétaro, bought a residence in the exclusive Woodlands area, north of Houston.
The acquisition was made in 2019, a year after leaving the senatorship for the PRI; In the first half of Peña’s government he had been the director of the National Disaster Fund (Fonden), which was extinguished by López Obrador due to corruption accusations. Tapia Franco resigned from the PRI and approached the 4T, with which he managed to do multimillion-dollar businesses in the midst of the pandemic.
After leaving his position as senator for the PRI, the current Morena-PT-Verde candidate for mayor of Querétaro, José María Tapia Franco, bought a residence valued at more than a million dollars in the exclusive area of Woodlands, north from Houston.
Before becoming a senator, Tapia Franco had been in charge of the National Disaster Fund (Fonden) between 2013 and 2016, an area in which according to President López Obrador corruption prevailed.
The residence that Tapia Franco bought in Woodlands, Texas, has an area equivalent to 960 square meters, although the constructed area is 370 square meters. The house has a large barbecue area, gardens and a pool in the back.
According to real estate agencies, the current estimated market value is 1 million 87 thousand dollars .
In official documents from Harris County (which covers the northern area of Houston) it is mentioned that Tapia Franco bought the residence on September 17, 2019.
Two years later, he transferred the property to a couple residing in Texas, and it was subsequently acquired by a businessman from León, Guanajuato, through a limited liability company, according to the history of the property.
He headed the Fonden, an area in which corruption prevailed
Appearance of the exterior and rear of the Woodlands residence.
Photos: zillow.com
Tapia Franco’s work history was linked to the PRI for more than a decade. The most important position that he held during his PRI period was in the Ministry of the Interior, at the head of Fonden.
As López Obrador has repeatedly denounced, Fonden was characterized by corruption, since million-dollar deals were made with disasters. That is why in 2019 he decided to delete it.
"When an emergency is declared, nothing is put out to tender and everything is purchased directly and there was a whole constellation of companies around the Fonden that were the ones that sold everything: sheets, pantries, cots, all of that managed by the Government, billions of pesos,” he accused in June 2019.
Despite these allegations of corruption, Morena nominated Tapia Franco for mayor of Querétaro, who was in charge of Fonden during the first half of Peña Nieto’s government.
Tapia was the general director for risk management in the Civil Protection Coordination, an area that reported to the Secretary of the Interior, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong.
Among Tapia Franco’s main functions was processing Fonden resources, which helped states affected by hurricanes, earthquakes or droughts.
In the period in which Tapia Franco was director of risk management, Fonden had an average annual budget of 7 billion pesos, and in his management the Superior Audit of the Federation documented constant deviations or mismanagement for hundreds of millions of pesos. pesos.
Before assuming the Fonden position, Tapia’s work history was exclusively in the PRI: from 2009 to 2011 as an advisor to the then national president of that party, Beatriz Paredes; from 2011 to 2012 secretary of liaison with metropolitan areas and in 2012 delegate of the Electoral Organization Secretariat.
Tapia left the management of Fonden in October 2016 to occupy the Secretariat of Electoral Action of the PRI, and just a year later he became Senator, filling the vacancy left by Pablo Escudero Morales, of the Green Party, who requested leave for personal reasons.
In 2018 he was campaign coordinator in Mexico City for the then candidate of the PRI-Green Party-New Alliance for the Presidency of Mexico, José Antonio Meade, who lost the election to López Obrador.
Partying in Las Vegas
Details of the interiors of the residence.
Photos: zillow.com
Tapia Franco resigned from the PRI in 2019 and almost immediately began approaching personalities from the 4T, such as Claudia Sheinbaum, to run for mayor of Querétaro for Morena.
Tapia Franco resigned from the PRI in 2019 and almost immediately began approaching personalities from the 4T, such as Claudia Sheinbaum, to run for mayor of Querétaro for Morena.
While negotiating his incursion into Morena in October 2023, MCCI published that Tapia had been accused of deviations and criminal negligence when he had Fonden in charge during the Peña Nieto government.
One of the incidents in which he was involved occurred in September 2013. While hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel threatened to hit the Mexican Pacific coast, the then official responsible for Fonden went to Las Vegas to celebrate the national holidays, placing bets of up to 20 thousand dollars, according to journalist Francisco Zea in Excelsior.
“(Tapia) was staying the weekend of September 15 at the Encore hotel, one of the most expensive in the city. He had dinner on the night of the 15th at the Japanese restaurant of the hotel complex called Mizumi, where he sang with a mariachi, hired for the Mexican holidays, displaying a bad voice and alcohol intoxication. Another day he dined at the very expensive Andreas restaurant in the same hotel and was seen sitting betting up to 20 thousand dollars at the Baccarat tables, which was witnessed by the local Green Party deputy Jesús Sesma, who, frightened, saw the excesses." Zea published on September 23 in a column titled “In Las Vegas it only rained alcohol.”
Subsequently, the newspaper Reforma published photographs in which Tapia appears in a swimsuit shaking two bottles of champagne at a hotel in Las Vegas.
Although the authorities themselves recognized that the person responsible for Fonden was in Las Vegas while the hurricanes devastated Guerrero, leaving more than 100 dead, there was no sanction and he was confirmed in his position.
Benefited from a contract at Sedena
View of the main area and the kitchen of the residence.
Photos: zillow.com
On April 13, 2020, Mexicans against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) revealed that Tapia Franco had obtained a direct award to sell the Secretariat of National Defense 1,330 ventilators for the COVID emergency, for an amount of 52 million euros, equivalent in those days to 1,350 million pesos.
The contract was obtained with a recently created company, called “Soluciones Integrales en Gestión de Riesgos de Desastres SA de CV”, which was established on December 19, 2018, and in which Tapia Franco owns 50% of the shares. .
The award was direct, protected by the decree of March 27, 2020 that recognizes the Covid-19 epidemic as a priority attention, which allowed the public bidding procedure to be dispensed with.
The order included 600 Hamilton brand ventilators, from Switzerland, each at a price of 33 thousand euros (about 846 thousand pesos), in addition to 730 Shangrila model ventilators, Aeon Medics brand, from Spain and China, with a unit value of 35 thousand euros (around 898 thousand pesos).
On September 1, 2022 , MCCI revealed that the ventilators had been sold to Sedena at a markup of more than 100 percent.
According to the contract between the parties to which MCCI agreed, the Secretariat of National Defense paid each piece of equipment coming from China and Spain to the equivalent of 822 thousand pesos (about 35 thousand dollars), while the price that the company declared in Customs at the time of the import was around 400 thousand pesos (almost 18 thousand dollars).
But in addition, an invoice consulted by MCCI shows that each piece of equipment had been quoted by the manufacturer at 368 thousand pesos (about 16 thousand dollars).
Other aspects of the interior of the residence.
Photos: zillow.com
Multiply your assets
In the same northern area of Houston where Tapia bought a residence, the so-called “Gray House ” was located , which was owned by a senior Baker Hughes executive, and which between 2019 and 2020 was occupied by the president’s eldest son, José Ramón López Beltrán .
As mentioned above, before becoming an official and legislator, Tapia’s work experience was linked to positions in the PRI. His work as a businessman took off with the Morena government, when he sold 1,330 ventilators to Sedena at a premium.
In addition to the apartment he had in Houston, Tapia acquired a residence and two properties in the El Campanario neighborhood of Querétaro (valued at 40 million pesos), an apartment in Acapulco, in addition to participating in an investment fund in 18 restaurants, as revealed on April 26 in an interview on the Presencia Universitaria program.
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