Those who have known lawyer Jesús Hernández Alcocer for a long time are not surprised by what happened last Thursday at the famous Suntory restaurant in the south-central part of Mexico City, where on Thursday night he resolved a claim by his young wife, the singer Yrma Lydya, and allegedly killed her with three bullets. The presence of Hernández Alcocer in that restaurant was not unusual, nor was it unusual for him to be armed. Almost every afternoon, Hernández Alcocer served on the ground floor of the restaurant, and he always had a pistol hanging.
Hernández Alcocer has a network of high-level connections that goes back more than a decade, in politics -he has even financed at least one political party-, in the Judiciary and in security, distinguishing himself by the arrogant way with which he who treated a lot of people. His relationships are not only from the past, but from the present, as he is linked, institutionally and personally, with some of the most influential and close people to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The most important relationship, according to military sources, is his partnership with General Audomaro Martínez Zapata, director of the National Intelligence Center, a person so close and influential with the president for more than 25 years, that at his proposal he appointed his compadre, General Luis Cresencio Sandoval, Secretary of National Defense, despite being the penultimate general in the meritocratic ranking for the position. His partnership, the sources indicated, is in the Sedregal company, focused on private security, although officially neither of them appears as part of the company.
Sedregal was incorporated in Querétaro on September 18, 2012 by his son Oscar Audomaro Martínez Hernández, Luis Arturo Oliver Navarro, who also comes from a military family, and two people about whom there is no public information available, Alejandra Janeth Arámbula Sánchez, who appears as sole administrator, and Diana Yamilet Hernández Zárate. Martínez Hernández is the one who appears as the executive general director.
There is not much public information available about the company, which had at least three government contracts from 2018 to 2020 with the Attorney General’s Office, before becoming the Attorney General’s Office, with Liconsa and with the National Bank of the Army, the Force Air and Navy. The company began to have contracts in the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, but it has been during López Obrador’s that it acquired a sustained force that it had not had before.
The society in Sedregal is not transparent, but military and political sources point out that General Martínez Zapata is not the only high-ranking military man in the founding of that company, and that there is at least one more who held positions of strategic importance in previous administrations. and that at some point he was a candidate to be secretary. Hernández Alcocer’s relationships within the Ministry of National Defense were something that the lawyer came to boast about for several years.
Within the opaque structure of Sedregal, it became known through comments by Hernández Alcocer himself over time that among the people linked to the company was the son of an important businessman, owner of one of the large Mexican groups, who disappeared from the list of those repeatedly attacked by President López Obrador in the morning during the first months of the government. Although those who spoke with Hernández Alcocer had the impression that the businessman’s son and the other person linked to the Puebla Group, namesake of the controversial former governor Mario Marín, very close to the lawyer, were partners of Sedregal, it is not clear that they are.
Hernández Alcocer’s relationship with the person in charge of the government’s civil intelligence apparatus is not the only one of high relevance for the lawyer. Judicial sources narrate the closeness that he has maintained with the attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, and with his right hand, the prosecutor specialized in Competence Control, Juan Ramos. According to two of the sources, Hernández Alcocer was a frequent visitor to their offices and they used to recommend speaking with him in order to have direct access to Ramos, and indirectly through that channel to Gertz Manero, in order to deal with cases and seek a solution outside of courts.
There are indications about alleged judicial benefits of Hernández Alcocer from that relationship, but no concrete data to date. It is also not clear whether the lawyer’s relationship with the prosecutor is old or stemmed from his relationship with the director of the National Intelligence Center. In any case, the links with three very important figures in the management of the political persecution of the regime are variables that must be carefully observed in the judicial process that will be brought against the lawyer.
Hernández Alcocer was arrested last Thursday at the Suntory along with his escort, by the escort of a capital official. According to press reports, he tried to bribe the police from the Benito Juárez mayor’s office, where the restaurant is located, who came to support the bodyguard who caught them while they tried to flee after the murder. The capital prosecutor’s office opened a folder for the alleged crime of femicide, and on Saturday he was transferred to the North Prison.
The action of the escort and the determination of the policemen not to be bribed, the prominence of the murdered person, the activity of the singer Yrma Lydia and the place where the crime was committed, made it one of high impact and interest for the media. communication, reducing room for maneuver so your partners and friends can easily act to get you out of trouble. The last word is not said in this country where the most influential weighs so much, and it will be seen in the coming weeks if they intervene for him or, as it should be, that they allow justice to do its job.
