Mexican President's plagiarism scandal

On August 29, Mexico's Inter-American University confirmed that President Enrique Peña Nieto's law thesis contained many copied passages.

Mexican President Nieto - Photo: AFP.

A press release from the Inter-American University confirmed that Enrique Peña Nieto's 25-year-old thesis contained “five forms of plagiarism,” among them “paragraphs quoting verbatim without citing the source at the end of the page or in the bibliography.”

A week ago, an investigative article by journalist Carmen Aistegui published on the news site Aristegui Noticias alleged that nearly 28% of Mr. Nieto's 1991 bachelor of law thesis was "reproduced" from other authors without their credit.

A government spokesman said at the time that the president had made a "writing error" by failing to cite his sources in his post, but he denied plagiarism.

Mr. Pena Nieto graduated from the private Panamericana University in Mexico with a thesis on former president Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928).

According to the report, 197 of the 682 paragraphs in Mr. Pena Nieto's thesis were copied from authors ranging from Mexican historian Enrique Krauze to University of New Mexico lecturer Linda Hall.

Journalists from Aristegui Noticias alleged that the passages in question were not in quotation marks and that the names of some of the original authors were not even mentioned in the thesis' appendix.

Government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez expressed surprise that "spelling errors, sentences without quotation marks and references missing author names, were brought to the attention of journalists after two and a half decades".

He said Mr Pena Nieto had "completed the prerequisites required by the Universidad Panamericana to become a lawyer".

After the accusations from the media, the private Catholic Inter-American University had to investigate. In a statement released on August 29, the school admitted that it “could not intervene because the current school regulations cannot be applied to former students.”

Mr. Nieto (center) receiving his diploma. Photo from Twitter.

The school said that in light of this unprecedented incident, it decided to consult with the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the largest university in Mexico, on the next steps to take.

The investigative teams at Aristegui Noticias have had previous run-ins with President Pena Nieto.

In November 2014, they obtained evidence that Mr. Pena Nieto's wife had bought a $7 million house from a government contractor.

Two months ago, Mr. Pena Nieto apologized for buying the house, saying it had damaged people's confidence in his presidency.

Mr Pena Nieto's popularity has plummeted (just 23% approval rating according to a poll by the Mexican daily Reforma) since he took office in 2012, but last week he said he was not interested in winning over public opinion.

According to Tuoitre