MEXICO CITY, Dec. 5 (UPI) — Mexico’s Veracruz state said police raided a property belonging to former Gov. Javier Duarte and recovered millions worth of stolen goods.
Duarte resigned in October to face a corruption investigation and disappeared a week later. Officers working for the Attorney General’s Office on Sunday raided Duarte’s El Faunito property, located in Veracruz’s Fortín de las Flores city.
“We have managed to recover property, real estate and resources worth [about $12 million] that had been stolen from Veracruz,” Veracruz’s current governor, Miguel Angel Yunes Linares, said in a statement.
Duarte is charged with organized crime and money laundering. Yunes Linares, who began serving as governor last week, said 17 works of art, some created by famous artists Joan Miro, Rufino Tamayo, Fernando Botero and Leonora Carrington, seized during the raid would be auctioned soon, and the proceeds used to finance a children’s hospital.
Other raids were conducted in Veracruz in which officers seized resources from Fidel Herrera Beltrán — also an ex-governor of Veracruz accused of corruption. Yunes Linares said he will “deliver to the people of Veracruz” about $36 million worth of illicit property and resources.
During the raids, officials seized a Learjet 45 private plane worth over $11 million and a Robinson helicopter worth nearly $900,000, but officials did not specify to whom the vehicles belonged. Yunes Linares has vowed to battle corruption during his term as governor.
