Mara Lezama, Quintana Roo
and the corruption the audit
does not see but
the United States does.

This is the final installment of a three-part series in which I documented the largest set of corruption cases in Mara Lezama's government that fall under U.S. jurisdiction, and reported them.

Mexico's federal audit office reviews one thing: the federal money that reaches the state. If that money is spent with the paperwork in order, the audit says zero findings. Quintana Roo achieved that in 2023 and 2024. It is true, and this file acknowledges it without hedging.

But federal money is not all the money. There are contracts paid with the state's own revenue. There are municipalities the federal audit does not touch every year. There are tourism trusts fed by local taxes. There are vendors who do favors. And there are private flights nobody can say who paid for. This file investigates exactly the territory that begins where the auditor's gaze ends.

You will find three things: a trail of public contracts that ends at a fuel-smuggling invoice mill identified by the federal prosecutor; a chain of companies connecting that trail to a firm sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury; and a pattern of private flights on aircraft tied to a vendor of the state itself. Each link with its level of proof. Each question with its document. And at the end, the U.S. statutes that make this a matter for Washington, not just for Chetumal.

And the display window has an inconvenient number that comes from the same window: the state's own welfare ministry reports that poverty grew 7.6 percent in one year, more than 52,000 people. With per-capita debt cut in half, an upgraded credit rating and zero findings, poverty rises. A state where the display-window indicators improve while people get poorer has money that does not arrive where it says it arrives. That is the question of this file, and the answer begins with the contracts.

The five companies, and what each one signed.

The detail that connects this part to the previous one. In 2024, SIMMA won the rehabilitation of the second park in Villas del Sol, Playa del Carmen, for about 16.9 million pesos. Villas del Sol is the housing development where the state prosecutor dismantled in July 2026 the cell that attacked six bars with a single weapon, and where the governor and the mayor held a public town hall a month later. The company of the fuel-smuggling invoice mill built the park of the extortion cell's neighborhood. It is a map.

The simulation. In Tulum, three of the companies, Construservicios ESL, Constructora 112029 and SIMMA, bid at the same time in the tender for the Cobá lagoon boardwalk. Three sister companies pretending to compete is the classic signature of a rigged tender. Who awarded it, on what criteria and at what price are the three questions running in the counter.

Who signed on the government side. The state Public Works Ministry is today headed by José Lara Díaz, who at the start of the administration ran the Educational Infrastructure Institute. Educational infrastructure is one of the contract categories. The question is institutional: who signs, on what criteria and at what price.

Three facts the breakdown exposes.

One: the state put up almost half. 74.3 of the 151.5 million came directly from the state government, the till the governor administers, not a distant municipality. Two: the cost ballooned on the showcase project. The Palapas park in downtown Cancún was originally contracted to SIMMA for 26.5 million and ended up exceeding 44: a 66 percent overrun, calculated by this file, on a project in plain sight. Three: the relationship predates it. On August 25, 2021, under award F/MTU/OM/RP/IR/2021-07/02, the Tulum municipality had already given SIMMA a machinery rental contract. In 2024 the state Public Works Ministry entered SIMMA and Comercializadora Mexqro in its contractor registry: the filter that should have caught them enrolled them.

And the network's capital has a declared origin. According to the FGR indictment, Raúl Rocha Cantú, co-owner of the Miss Universe pageant, participated in the organization by injecting capital to bring in fuel from Guatemala and from the United States. Rocha Cantú became a protected witness, admitted to the FGR his participation in fuel smuggling and stated that the network used invoices issued by Tabasco Capital. In August 2026 the FGR obtained a new arrest warrant against him for money laundering, with financial intelligence findings on real estate purchased with cashier's checks. Reports place him on a FinCEN watch list. Fuel leaving the United States, fake invoices in Mexico, public-works contracts in the Caribbean and a company on the Treasury's sanctions list. That circuit has jurisdiction in two countries.

The Villas del Sol park is four signatures away from a company sanctioned by Washington for serving the CJNG.

Why this is not lifestyle gossip. An official who receives a benefit from a vendor of her own government does not have an image problem: she has a conflict-of-interest problem, and if the benefit is proven, a bribery problem. That the aircraft are tied to a state contractor is what lifts the case from anecdote to file. That 69 of those flights landed in the United States is what gives Washington something to say. The governor has not produced the invoice for a single flight. That is the document this file asks for first.

Federal legislators asked the Anticorruption Ministry and the federal auditor to investigate the origin of the funds. As of this file, there is no institutional answer.

Why it matters in this chain. PABE-TAX is the company whose Gulfstreams fly the governor and her family to Vail, Orlando and other destinations, and it is associated with Seguritech, a security-systems vendor of the state. The same company that provides her private flights sold, or rented, the government its most expensive aircraft, at 3.4 times the price, paid with public money. That is no longer a coincidence of vendors: it is a circuit. And "security cannot be anyone's business," the governor said that July 7.

Three calculations on that table. One: 77.5 million for a 32-day study is 2.4 million pesos per working day, with 23.2 million advanced before a single page was delivered. Two: the 2,869.9 million were awarded without a tender. Three: the man who signs the state's security contracts also represents the company that flies the governor to the United States. Mexican law calls that a conflict of interest, and U.S. law, where there is a nexus, calls it bribery.

Seguritech is owned by Ariel Picker Schatz and operates systems in at least seven states. In 2025 the National Customs Agency cancelled contracts with the company at the federal level. The state of Quintana Roo keeps and expands them.

Signed analysis, labeled as such. The government of Quintana Roo can keep showing its credit rating. What it cannot show is the invoice for a flight, the award criteria of a tender with three sister companies, or the trail of 150 million to a fuel-smuggling invoice mill. And each of those absences has an office in Washington that needs no permission from the FGR to open. Section 7031(c) is the simplest of all: it requires no trial, it requires a file. This is the file.

What the law says, in one sentence.

Any person who in the United States arranges meetings with authorities, does public relations or promotes the interests of a foreign government, and a Mexican state is a foreign government, must register with the Department of Justice within ten days of accepting the engagement, and disclose who pays, how much and what they do. It is the Foreign Agents Registration Act, 22 USC 611 et seq. Tourism promotion on behalf of a foreign government is expressly covered. Failing to register is a federal crime punishable by up to five years per willful violation, 22 USC 618. The registry has nobody for Quintana Roo. So one of two things: either nobody is paid to open doors, or whoever is paid does it outside the law.

The pattern that emerges. The governor's documented doors in the United States are Mexican officials: consuls. That is allowed and requires no registration. What appears nowhere is who organizes the meetings with businesspeople and, above all, who arranged the contact with a U.S. federal agency. Sixty-nine flights to the United States are not filled with consuls alone. Someone books, someone introduces, someone gets paid. If there is a consultancy, a firm or an intermediary receiving money from the government of Quintana Roo, its promotion council or a vendor for that work, that contract exists and must be in two places: the state's accounts and the DOJ registry. It is in neither.

Signed analysis, labeled as such: the agent is the witness. In FARA cases, the Department of Justice does not start with the foreign government: it starts with the unregistered agent, because that is a person on U.S. soil, exposed to five years per violation, and with every incentive to cooperate. The intermediary who scheduled meetings without registering is not a comfortable accomplice: he is the first cooperating witness a prosecutor will look for. And a cooperating witness delivers contracts, emails, payments and names. That is why this file does not need to know today who he is. It needs the DOJ registry to stay at zero while the flights keep landing. That contradiction documents itself.

Zero registered agents and sixty-nine landings. Someone opens the door. And whoever opens it without registering is the one who closes it.

How it was done, so anyone can repeat it. Every aircraft has a 24-bit ICAO code it transmits in flight. This file obtained the codes of the eight aircraft cited in the flight records, XA-PKR 0D0E66, XA-GLF 0D0F1C, XA-BAT 0D119B, XA-USZ 0D0796, XA-UMV 0D0731, XA-AMI 0D1024, XA-MAM 0D04D9 and the state helicopter XA-VGF 0D0F1E, and downloaded the daily public traces from ADS-B Exchange, day by day, to detect each takeoff and landing and assign it to the nearest airport. The method validates itself: it reproduces the Dulles arrival of March 16, 2023, consistent with the Cancún-Washington flight reported in the press for the 15th.

What the log adds that was not published. The aircraft returned to Dulles on November 1 and 2, 2023, arriving from El Paso and from Orlando: a second window in Washington no record had mentioned. Three legs departed directly from Cancún to the United States: to Reno on February 1, 2023, to San Diego on August 23, 2023 and to Orlando on December 26, 2023. The rest of the aircraft's map: El Paso five times, Orlando five, Mesa four, Newark four, Dallas three, Miami Opa Locka two, Fort Lauderdale two, San Diego two. And fourteen landings in Cancún in the period, placing the aircraft of a state vendor based in Toluca as a regular visitor to Quintana Roo's tourism capital.

The discipline. This is the aircraft's log, not a passenger's. An air-taxi aircraft flies for many clients. What this file asserts is exactly what it measures: where that aircraft landed and when. Cross-referencing that log with the dates of each official tour and with the governor's immigration record is the request that turns it into evidence.

The cross-check this file builds. The notary who executed deeds for the governor's family real-estate company is today the president of the Quintana Roo judiciary, the piece Part 2 identified as the Green Party's control of the courts. The man who certified the family's purchases presides over the state courts that would have to judge them. It is a structural conflict no local court can resolve about itself. That is why the way out is federal, and why it matters in Washington: section 1956(c)(7)(B) of the U.S. criminal code treats a foreign official's enrichment as unlawful activity for money laundering, and Cancún's real-estate circuit is paid, in large part, in dollars.

Three point four million declared. One hundred two point nine million of house. The arithmetic asks.

Four original findings on the document.

One: it grows faster than tourism. Revenue of 771.8 million in 2023 against 636.0 in 2022: 21 percent more in one year. Two: it is an ad-buying machine. Of 769.8 million spent, 661.8 went to advertising and communication: 86 percent. Three: it owes more than it takes in. At the close of 2023 it recorded 815.9 million payable to suppliers, 106 percent of its annual revenue, and the report itself admits that "due to lack of liquidity, campaigns had to be paused." An agency with a surplus on paper, broke in the till, while the state boasted its credit rating. Four: it buys media in the United States. The report describes a streaming campaign during the 102 games of the 2023 NFL season, targeting New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and a digital campaign with 35.6 million expected impacts in the United States, Latin America and Europe.

And here it closes the circle with chapter 06·B. An NFL streaming campaign is not bought from Playa del Carmen: it is executed through an agency or platform in the United States. When that agency disseminates promotional material on behalf of an agency of a foreign government, the Foreign Agents Registration Act requires it to register. The CPTQ documents in its own Public Account multimillion campaigns in six U.S. cities, and the FARA registry shows zero for Mexico. Who executed those campaigns, how much they were paid and with whom they are registered are the requests that were missing.

Eight hundred sixteen million payable and campaigns paused for lack of cash. The display window also has a back room.

Three original findings from the cross-check.

One: the batch filing. Five different companies, with different representatives, registered on the same day with consecutive numbers. A contractor registry requires articles of incorporation, a tax return, proof of address and a construction résumé for each company. Either five independent companies coincided by chance at the Chetumal counter on January 18, 2024, or someone filed five dossiers together. The public record cannot tell the two hypotheses apart. The Ministry's internal file can.

Two: the contract before the registry. Picorp de México signed on November 28, 2023 a 77.5-million agreement for studies for a prison in Cancún, with a 23.2-million advance. Its registration in the state contractor registry is dated March 8, 2024: 101 days later. It was paid before it formally existed as a state contractor.

Three: the filter that does not filter. We cross-checked the 651 entries against the full 69-B list: zero matches. None of the registered companies is flagged by the tax authority as an invoice mill. That means two things at once: the registry does check tax status, and that check does not detect a company the FGR describes as the invoice mill of a criminal network. The two Mexican radars, tax and criminal, do not touch either. A construction company can be clean before the SAT and dirty before the FGR, and the registry enrolls it.

What is documented, in four pieces.

One: the warning and the operation. In March 2023 the DEA warned that pharmacies in Mexican tourist areas were selling counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl and methamphetamine to American tourists; a Los Angeles press investigation had bought medication without prescription at 29 pharmacies in the country and found a third contained those substances. Five months later came Albatros: nonexistent licenses, controlled medication without traceability, prescriptions with no doctor or patient, signs in English. The result of the fentanyl sampling from those 23 pharmacies was never published. Three years later it remains the question.

Two: who PDC is. Farmacia PDC is a brand of Grupo Lofex, also owner of Farmacias PV, a chain founded in 1984 and consolidated, according to its own website, "in the Bahía de Banderas area." Its declared footprint is a list of tourist destinations and nothing else: Sayulita, Bucerías, Nuevo Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, Playa del Carmen, Cancún, Tulum, Cozumel, Isla Mujeres, Holbox, Mahahual, San Carlos, Los Cabos, Puerto Escondido, Zicatela, Huatulco and Mérida. Bahía de Banderas and Puerto Vallarta are the corridor where this file counted, in Part 2, 62 U.S. Treasury designations with a local address, the core of the timeshare fraud and of the CJNG. A pharmacy chain is born in that corridor and expands to the Caribbean.

Three: the precedent exists. This file read the Treasury's master file: OFAC has designated five Mexican pharmacies as narcotics fronts, three under the Kingpin Act, Farmacia Vida Suprema, Farmacia Jerlyne and Punto Farmacéutico, and two under the fentanyl executive order, Farmacia Ludim and Farmacia y Mini Súper Trinidad. The pharmacy as a laundering and distribution vehicle is a figure Washington already sanctions.

Four: the own cross-check. Grupo Lofex, Farmacias PV, PDC and Provemedic appear in none of the 19,329 SDN entries nor among the 14,143 taxpayers of the 69-B list. They are clean on both radars. Just like Tabasco Capital.

Every claim in the testimony has a document that confirms or demolishes it.

Signed analysis, labeled as such: why this belongs to Washington. Fentanyl sold to American tourists over a counter in Playa del Carmen is DEA jurisdiction and U.S. criminal law, 21 USC 841 and 960, regardless of where the counter stands. Pharmacies as fronts already have five designation precedents in the Treasury's file. Marriott International is a U.S. company: any franchise negotiated with politically exposed persons from a state under this file runs through its own compliance program and through the FCPA. The testimony puts names to a pattern the authorities of both countries have already documented separately: tourist pharmacies, fentanyl-laced pills, CJNG money. What is missing is the document that connects them, and that document exists in eight offices.

Two PDC pharmacies suspended over fentanyl in 2023. Three years later nobody has published the sampling result.