Mexico first lady in spotlight over deal on mansion

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s first lady, soap opera star Angelica Rivera, is back in the spotlight. But rather than receiving public adulation, she’s the subject of ridicule.

A poll released over the weekend found that three-quarters of Mexicans think Rivera isn’t telling the truth about how much she earned during her television career and how she paid for a $7 million mansion that’s at the heart of a political scandal enveloping her husband, President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Among those scoffing at Rivera are fellow television actors, who contend she never pulled in the kind of money she claims.

Rivera posted a video on her website Nov. 18 detailing how she’d amassed a net worth of $10.4 million during a 25-year television career at Televisa.

Since then, Televisa has stayed mum and Rivera has been left alone to deal with a rain of public criticism.

The results of the nationwide telephone poll by the Reforma news group, released Saturday, found that 77 percent of the 400 people surveyed don’t believe Rivera’s explanation of how she obtained the mansion in Mexico City’s posh Lomas de Chapultepec district. Some 13 percent said they did believe her and 10 percent said they didn’t know.

In her video, Rivera acknowledged that a subsidiary of Grupo Higa, a major government contractor, had built the mansion to her design specifications and that once it was completed, she’d paid a portion of the cost and agreed to pay the rest over eight years at below-market interest rates.

The Reforma poll found that 71 percent of those asked thought the mansion deal represented a conflict of interest for the first couple.

Pena Nieto has sidestepped the issue of a conflict of interest, saying the mansion belonged solely to his wife.

Senators from opposition parties both to the political left and right of the ruling PRI, as Pena Nieto’s party is known, have demanded a judicial probe of the mansion, alleging that the contractor sought influence with the first couple.