How Lost Evidence and Empty Lots Shielded the Moreira Empire

The fight on the floor of Mexico’s Congress in late August was chaotic. Alejandro “Alito” Moreno, the national leader of the PRI, clashed with Senate president Gerardo Fernández Noroña after accusing him of cutting off the PRI’s allotted speaking time. Cameras from NMás captured the confrontation. Quadratín photographs placed PRI coordinator Rubén Moreira in the same frame, standing at Moreno’s side. A Yandex reverse image search matched his face against prior press shots, and Quadratín’s own caption confirmed it.

The Moreira brothers have long defended their finances. When Humberto was detained in Spain in 2016, his lawyers presented invoices from two companies: Unipolares y Espectaculares del Norte and Negocios, Asesoría y Publicidad Integral Nuevo Milenio. Both were registered at the same Saltillo address. Animal Político reported, “Both companies, Unipolares y Espectaculares del Norte and Negocios Asesoría y Publicidad Integral Nuevo Milenio, are registered at the same address in Saltillo. Their invoices show them billing each other, an irregular pattern consistent with simulated operations.” Vanguardia added, “At the listed address there is no advertising company. Neighbors said they had never seen such an office operating there.”

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Spanish proceedings could not resolve the question. In December 2017 Judge Santiago Pedraz traveled with Spanish prosecutors to San Antonio, Texas, to hear protected witnesses. He personally attended one of the sessions and attempted to record it, but later acknowledged he did not have that audio recording when he returned to Spain. In 2020 the Audiencia Nacional archived the case again, noting that the declarations had not been preserved, that the evidence was insufficient, and that the court lacked jurisdiction over events that took place in Mexico and the United States. In 2018, before the final closure, the same court had described an “estructura societaria sin actividad real, con testaferros” and pointed to links with Juan Manuel “El Mono” Muñoz, identified in Spain as an ally of Los Zetas.

The United States did pursue cases tied to the same circle. In a 2016 San Antonio trial, former Zetas financial operator Rodrigo Humberto Uribe Tapia testified, “The Zetas paid millions of pesos to the governor of Coahuila in exchange for protection. The money was delivered through Vicente Chaires, Moreira’s personal secretary.” In 2014 federal prosecutors indicted Coahuila’s treasurer Héctor Javier Villarreal Hernández for laundering “proceeds of embezzlement, bribery, and drug trafficking” through Texas accounts and real estate. ICE announced, “This investigation has uncovered the laundering of millions of dollars through accounts and real estate in the United States — proceeds of bribery, embezzlement, and drug trafficking in Coahuila, Mexico.” In 2020 former interim governor Jorge Torres López admitted his role. U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick stated, “Former governor Torres admitted to conspiring to launder bribes he received in exchange for contracts with the state of Coahuila through U.S. financial institutions.”

Testimony cited by international human rights groups adds to the record. In filings to the International Criminal Court, the International Federation for Human Rights reported that U.S. court witnesses described Humberto Moreira receiving millions from the Zetas in cash-stuffed suitcases and vehicles, routed through aides like Vicente Chaires. The same report concluded that under Humberto’s administration, Coahuila authorities colluded systematically with the cartel, enabling massacres such as Allende in 2011 and allowing the Piedras Negras prison to function as an extermination site. When Rubén Moreira succeeded his brother, the pattern did not end. According to the same report, his government created special police units—GATE, GATEM, GROM—that carried out enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings directly. Between 2006 and 2016 more than 1,800 people were reported disappeared in Coahuila, with no senior officials held accountable.

The artifacts of this period are still visible in Saltillo. Rubén Moreira’s asset declarations list more than twenty thousand square meters of property, including eight large lots. Infobae reported that many were acquired in cash, including one purchase in April 2010 valued at 10.2 million pesos covering more than two thousand square meters. In satellite views of the Lomas de Lourdes enclave, the parcel identified with that purchase stands behind concrete walls and a black gate, its interior vacant. Other nearby holdings show façades that have been updated, but the land inside remains closed off and undeveloped. Together they illustrate a pattern: properties accumulated and fenced, more valuable as parked capital than as active homes or businesses.

The same pattern appears in the firms that were cited abroad to explain the money. Unipolares y Espectaculares del Norte and Negocios, Asesoría y Publicidad Integral Nuevo Milenio issued invoices to one another and to a handful of clients, but their supposed offices could not be located. As Animal Político reported, both companies shared the same Saltillo address, and “their invoices show them billing each other, an irregular pattern consistent with simulated operations.” Vanguardia noted, “At the listed address there is no advertising company. Neighbors said they had never seen such an office operating there.” On paper they generated millions. On the ground, they did not appear to exist.

The pattern of contradiction—public cooperation, private collusion—was already visible before Spain and the United States intervened. In June 2009, months after the kidnapping of U.S. security consultant Félix Batista in Saltillo, Governor Humberto Moreira met with U.S. consulate officials in Monterrey. A leaked diplomatic cable shows he arrived with Attorney General Jesús Torres Charles, Chief of Staff Vicente Chaires, and senior military officers. At the table with DEA, FBI, ICE, and ATF, they acknowledged that kidnappings were rising and that municipal police in La Laguna were compromised. Moreira promised cooperation and intelligence sharing. Years later, U.S. testimony placed Chaires as the courier for Zetas bribes, and Torres Charles was accused of tolerating Zetas control of state prisons. The Batista case was never solved.

Academic work reinforces the same conclusion. A 2020 study from Leiden University argued that Coahuila under the PRI was a textbook case of “subnational authoritarianism.” The Moreira administrations maintained power through patronage networks and collusion, while local courts shielded perpetrators in scandals like the forged-debt Moreirazo. The study found that stability in Coahuila was sustained not through democratic institutions but through authoritarian pacts with organized crime. Humberto’s alliances with union leaders and business elites insulated him despite scandals, while Rubén carried the system forward under a new guise.

The network functioned not only through property and shell companies but also through media. Official registries show firms such as Super Medios de Coahuila, S.A. de C.V. and Radio Comunicación de Saltillo, S.A. de C.V. holding broadcast concessions, while state transparency logs document large advertising outlays routed to them between 2011 and 2016. Coahuila provider lists include RCG Espectaculares, S.A. de C.V., another favored outlet. Reported links connect Vicente Chaires, the same aide named in bribe testimony, to Super Medios and to cross-border companies in Texas. Together they illustrate a cycle in which public advertising budgets under PRI governments flowed through friendly media firms, recycling state money while ensuring favorable coverage.

Witness testimony from U.S. proceedings goes further. Accounts gathered by researchers at the University of Texas Human Rights Center include statements that bribes were not limited to Humberto. One cooperating witness described delivering cash directly to Rubén Moreira during his political career. These accounts have never been tested in Mexican courts, but they extend the line of allegation beyond one brother to both.

Documents later published by El Universal show how Mexico’s own prosecutors moved quickly to shelve the issue. In 2016, the PGR received financial intelligence reports citing “operaciones inusuales y relevantes,” suspicious transfers linked to Moreira. The same file contained bank statements from the CNBV and information provided by the U.S. Department of Justice about Texas entities tied to the Villarreal case, including Barcelona at Stone Oak LLC, Peninsula South Padre I LLC, and Villa Premio Gas LLC. Within 33 days, the case was closed. In Texas, however, real estate connected to the same network of companies faced forfeiture proceedings.

From the forged debt that ballooned under Humberto’s administration, to the invoice firms cited in Spain, to testimony and guilty pleas in Texas courts, to the ICC filing that documented crimes against humanity, to academic studies that frame Coahuila as a model of authoritarian collusion, the record has accumulated piece by piece. Associates have been convicted. Witnesses have testified under oath. Prosecutors in Spain described companies without activity fronted by intermediaries. International NGOs catalogued massacres, extermination camps, and more than 1,800 disappeared. U.S. proceedings named bribes delivered to both Humberto and Rubén. Mexico’s own prosecutors shut down inquiries in little more than a month.

Through it all, the Moreira brothers deny wrongdoing. In 2025, Rubén Moreira remains in Congress, leading the PRI bench, standing at the center of a televised brawl. The shell firms are absent from commerce, but the walled lots in Saltillo remain. The media outlets continue to hold their concessions. And the unanswered questions about a political dynasty’s relationship to organized crime, public money, and violence remain unresolved.