Journalist María Teresa Montaño became obsessed with using the State of Mexico’s online procurement database to track down smaller and quirkier contracts. She suspected many contracts were fake, especially those handed to obscure companies based hundreds of kilometers away from her state. At least 17 journalists were reportedly murdered last year alone in Mexico, where at least 17 people were killed in 2013, according to local media reports. In Mexico, exposing wrongdoing by government officials is not easy anywhere in the world, but it is often a matter of life and death.
Source: Written by OCCRP, 2023-06-03; https://www.occrp.org/en/daily//en/daily/17714-government-corruption-exposed-after-mexican-journalist-was-abducted