Ricardo Pierdant - Apology

On 9 and 12 August, we published stories that alleged, wrongly, that Ricardo Pierdant and his businesses had a potential conflict of interest, because the First Lady of Mexico, Angelica Rivera, had occasional access to a luxury apartment that he owns in Miami, while at the same time we said, his companies were expected to be tendering for lucrative Mexican government contracts. While it is not disputed that, in 2014, Mr Pierdant paid the 2013 Property Tax due on an apartment owned by Mrs Rivera, nor that he and the President are long time personal friends, we accept that none of Mr Pierdant’s companies have obtained any contracts with the Mexican government nor have they participated in any such contracting processes. In the light of this, we accept that the underlying premise of our articles were wrong. We have now removed the articles from our website and we apologise to Mr Pierdant for having made such a suggestion (“Mexican first lady’s Florida home owned by potential government contractor: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/mexico-first-lady-florida-property-government-contractor-documents-reveal ;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/12/mexico-president-pena-nieto-wife-miami-apartment).