The Mexico City police arrested Ricardo Márquez Blas, coordinator of Institutional Strengthening of the Supreme Court, this Tuesday afternoon accused of sexual abuse by one of his subordinates. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the events for which he is accused occurred in August, in the Cuauhtémoc mayor’s office in the capital. The official, who had been hired in 2023 by the president of the high court, Norma Piña, also served as head of the CNI between 2013 and 2014, and as head of the Information Unit for Public Security from 2014 to 2018, both during the mandate of former President Enrique Peña Nieto.

According to the arrest sheet distributed by the police, the arrest occurred around six in the afternoon on José María Pino Suárez Street, in the historic center of the capital, where the official resides. Márquez Blas is now in the eastern male preventive prison, at the disposal of the judicial authorities.

Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador harshly criticized the hiring of Márquez Blas last year for being contrary to the “republican austerity” that his Government boasted. In one of his morning conferences he exhibited the asset declaration of the official, who receives a salary of 124,000 pesos per month for his position as coordinator, and accused him of being a collaborator of the former Security Tsar Genaro García Luna, recently convicted in the United States for drug trafficking to 38 years of prison.