Peña Nieto used a home owned by Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantú, a contractor who had donated to Peña Nieto's political party, as an office while running for president in 2012.
Source: The New York Times
Peña Nieto also used a helicopter owned by one of Hinojosa's companies free of charge during his presidential campaign. Hinojosa won billions of dollars in contracts while Peña Nieto was governor of Mexico state and president.
In mid-2015, reports emerged that Peña Nieto appeared to have misrepresented how he acquired a piece of property outside Mexico City on disclosure forms filed in 2013. He amended the forms the following year, but questions remained about where he got the property, as well as how much it was worth.
Source: Business Insider, Reuters
Peña Nieto was heralded for the reduction in violence that occurred during his first years in office. But in September 2014, Mexico experienced one of its most notorious crimes: the abduction and likely killing of 43 students from a rural teachers' college in Ayotzinapa, in the southwest state of Guerrero.
Source: The New York Times, Reuters
The Ayotzinapa 43 disappearance has dogged the Peña Nieto administration, because of both the complicity of local police and other government officials in the crime and the government's deeply flawed investigation.
Source: Reuters
Weeks after the Ayotzinapa 43 disappearance, Peña Nieto's ties to the contractor Hinojosa reentered the spotlight. His government canceled a multibillion-dollar high-speed train contract in which Hinojosa was involved.
Source: Business Insider, Aristegui Noticias
That cancellation was followed days later by the revelation that Peña Nieto's wife had bought a home in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood on favorable terms (and with a loan) from one of Hinojosa's firms.
Source: Business Insider, Aristegui Noticias
International outcry over the Ayotzinapa 43 disappearance, coupled with mounting suspicions over Peña Nieto's dealings with Hinojosa, dogged the president into 2015.
By early 2015, with pressure mounting, Peña Nieto ordered his government to launch an investigation into allegations of influence-peddling swirling around his dealings with Hinojosa.
Source: Vice News
Many Mexicans rolled their eyes, however, when in February it was announced that the man who would lead the investigation was the federal comptroller Virgilio Andrade, a longtime friend of the finance secretary Luis Videgaray, who also purchased property from one of Hinojosa's firms.
Source: Vice News
Mexico's 2015 midterm elections occurred while the investigation in Peña Nieto's property dealings and recriminations over the Ayotzinapa 43 disappearance continued.
Source: Business Insider
The midterm election was seen as a litmus test for Peña Nieto's administration. Protesters burned ballot boxes in several restive southern states in an attempt to disrupt the voting, while officials said the vote was proceeding satisfactorily despite "isolated incidents," according to the AP. "Peña Nieto doesn’t know how to defend us because he is a donkey," said one relative of a disappeared Ayotzinapa student.
Source: Business Insider
Peña Nieto's governing coalition maintained its legislative majority after the midterm elections, but just weeks after the ballots were cast, his administration was again embarrassed by a lapse in security when Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán tunneled out of a high-security prison on July 12.
Pena Nieto, who had traveled to France for an official visit when drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped, returned to Mexico and said in a speech on July 17 that the jailbreak has caused "indignation, frustration, anger in broad sectors of society."
The humiliation for Peña Nieto's government was deepened when, months later, it was revealed by Mexican news magazine Reforma that, while flying to France, Peña Nieto decided to continue his game of dominos after learning that Guzmán had escaped.
Source: Associated Press, Reforma
Guzmán's flight from justice became a source of continuing frustration for the Mexican government. In the weeks afterward, dozens of prison officials would be arrested in relation to the escape, and details about the jailbreak that trickled out revealed numerous lapses in judgment and performance by officials at the prison.
Guzmán returned to his home turf in the mountainous region around Sinaloa state in northwest Mexico, and security forces hunting him followed his trail. In late 2015, it was reported that Mexican marines searching for the drug lord in the hills of Durango state had fired indiscriminately at people on the ground. "I could see the helicopter stop and shoot directly at the house," a woman from the area told AFP. "I was scared, screamed and cried, although I knew it was useless."
Mexico recaptured Guzmán in a city in northwest Sinaloa state, seemingly putting an end to the fiasco the drug lord created with his escape. But the following day, Rolling Stone published Sean Penn's bombshell interview with the fugitive kingpin.
News that a famous Hollywood actor had been able to meet with the world's most wanted man seemed to again tar the administration. Peña Nieto's government has said the interview helped it track down Guzmán, which Penn has denied.
19 uncomfortable photos of Mexico's scandal-plagued president
With Guzmán back in custody, Peña Nieto's government is not navigating toward what will likely be the drug lord's extradition to the US, sure to be a protracted process. Guzmán's legal challenges are not the extent of the government's woes, however.
Data released in early 2016 showed that homicides in Mexico rose nearly 8% in 2015, the first rise in Peña Nieto's time in office. The continued global-oil-price slump has also battered the country's state-run oil company, Pemex. Pemex's financial struggles prevented the reforms Peña Nieto fought to implement from yielding the results he promised.
Homicides in Mexico increased in 2015 after two years of declines, and the total for last year may go up as more data is released.
As global oil prices fell throughout 2015 and early 2016, Pemex's production costs reportedly outstripped the profit it was making. The shortfall reportedly led to budget cuts at the firm, which seemed to undercut the Peña Nieto's comments about the benefits of energy reform, which put "Mexico’s energy sector officials are in crisis mode.” argued El Daily Post’s Dwight Dyer.
