Pemexgate

Pemexgate was a political scandal of the Mexican political party PRI that occurred during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) and was discovered and investigated during the presidency of Vicente Fox (2000-2006). It was centered on the transfer of 500 million pesos (US$53 million) to the PRI candidate for the 2000 Presidential Elections, Francisco Labastida Ochoa, from Pemex, Mexico's national oil company.

A year long of intense investigations, hearings, and negotiations occurred in 2002, but no one was prosecuted by the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) in the end. The National Electoral Institute (IFE) still found PRI guilty of violating the electoral law and fined them a huge sum of over 1 billion pesos (US$97 million) for its failure to report the campaign funding diverted from Pemex. The fine was considered the largest in history, equal to the financing the PRI would have received from the fed in 2003 and half of 2004.

President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the oil industry in Mexico in 1938 as a result of dispute between the labor union and the petroleum companies. Before then, the oil industry was dominated by foreign companies with foreign capital that resisted the formation of unions. When the Mexican Petroleum Workers Union's (STPRM) was finally formed in 1935, they demanded fair working conditions and increased wages, which was supported by President Cárdenas' recommendation to bring the issue to the arbitration board. The union members issued a strike when their needs were not met, which caused a petroleum shortage in the country for a short period.

The arbitration board eventually sided with the union, and the Supreme Court ordered that the companies should meet the workers' demands. However, the companies protested, and Cárdenas offered a deal to end the strike if the companies paid 26 million pesos for the loss of wage incurred by the strike. When neither option passed, Cárdenas decided to create the national oil company, Pemex.

The expropriation was an acid test of the newly announced Good Neighbor Policy by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Despite concerns that this will sour relations between United States and Mexico, the two were more cordial than ever before and even ended up in the Latin American countries joining the United States on the allied side.

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