Government of Nayarit. The arrests of notaries are part of the Megaoperation Nuevo Nayarit, which began in 2022 to allegedly recover heritage assets valued at around 50 billion pesos, and which has allowed for the judicialization of investigations related to real estate operations and irregular registrations that had been backlogged. Two other notaries are facing process linkages in Nayarit. After almost four years without judicial actions against public notaries, the Attorney General's Office of the State of Nayarit carried out arrests and process linkages that continue investigations that had been backlogged during the previous fiscal administration. On December 31, 2025, the Attorney General's Office reported the process linkage of Luis Miguel “N”, public notary number 19 of Bucerías, municipality of Bahía de Banderas, for his probable responsibility in the crimes of “general document forgery, certification forgery, crimes related to the certification, formalization, registration, and inscription of real estate and operations with resources of illicit origin.” The judge set a four-month deadline for the completion of the complementary investigation. On January 1, it was also announced that the arrest of Jesús “N”, in-office public notary number 18 of Tepic, was executed for his probable participation in crimes of “criminal association, general document forgery, certification forgery, certification, formalization, registration, and inscription of real estate and fraudulent administration.” Jesús “N” was made available to the judge of First Instance Control of the Accusatory and Oral Penal System based in Bucerías, municipality of Bahía de Banderas. His arrest, according to the authorities, corresponds to investigation folder 1058/2025, composed of facts that were already in process before being judicialized. These two cases are part of a series of judicial actions that reflect an institutional adjustment, although they contrast with the more than four years of the current state government, in which no public actions against notaries were registered, despite the fact that some of the now-imputed had been serving in previous administrations or within the state government. The judge established a three-month deadline for the complementary investigation and gave notice to the State Notariat for the suspension of his FIAT. The governor of Nayarit, Miguel Ángel Navarro, until mid-November made his dissatisfaction with the performance of the attorney general, Petronilo Díaz Ponce Medrano —also head of Notary Public No. 32 of Compostela— public, who resigned prematurely in December 2025, although his legal term ended in 2026. During a press conference, Navarro stated that, “he has not worked for me in the competition that we must make coincide, he has done it for me in an acceptable way and of course a substitution and another proposal is made.” Faced with questions about whether the attorney general would remain until 2026, as legally planned, the ruler added that “they are minimal situations that he himself has presented to continue in some situations that we have talked about, but he ends.” Regarding his possible reassignment to other positions, Navarro indicated that he could include him and expressed his support for the new head of the Attorney General's Office, Ludmila Heredia Verdugo, who was a sub-prosecutor and also former general director of the Bahía de Banderas Trust. Furthermore, Heredia Verdugo, on the subject, explained to the media that after the resignation of the anti-corruption prosecutor Armando Manuel Por in August 2025, who had held the position since 2021, a backlog of approximately 700 investigation folders without work was detected, coming from various administrations. Among these folders were investigations for the awarding of contracts to individuals without tender or without cabildo approval, irregularities in revocations, sale of positions and diversion of resources, as well as files related to notaries that had been “frozen” for years. Among the folders that were in 'limbo', it was seen that in several folders there were facts classified as criminal, against notaries; some folders were distributed in units that did not correspond, such as violent crimes, and so many irregularities. According to the official, after an internal analysis, the folders were redistributed to the specialized units, which allowed for progress in judicial processes. “And from there, it happened that a single notary had four process linkages in just one week, they were only the folders that were in process; those that are being added are missing,” she detailed. Notaries in the crosshairs of criminal justice. The recent arrests and processes are concentrated in Bahía de Banderas, a key municipality due to its tourism, economic and real estate dynamism, where the files reveal irregularities in the certification, formalization, registration, and inscription of real estate, as well as operations with resources of illicit origin. Although the Attorney General's Office has not specified the exact number of notaries being investigated, it has confirmed that there are other active cases that are being judicialized and that are part of a comprehensive review of allegedly irregular notarial acts. Despite the Attorney General's Office being independent from the Executive Branch, Verdugo highlighted that the governor's indication is that Public Ministry agents and police act with total freedom and in accordance with the law, and that currently experts, accountants, and specialists are working to correctly integrate the files and follow up on acts of corruption. In addition, she mentioned that the Attorney General's Office is reviewing 100 volumes of an investigation file against a former governor to establish the traceability of its patrimonial evolution and determine possible links with companies or individuals improperly benefited, which evidences the scope of the structural investigations being implemented beyond the notarial sector. To date, the Attorney General's Office has not specified whether the notaries' cases are connected to each other, nor how many more could be added to the judicial processes, although official sources confirm that there are more active investigations. However, these arrests reflect a pattern of late, sustained judicialization after years of inaction, and the notarial sector has so far not made its position public regarding the legal consequences for its members. This is not the first time that public notaries have been involved in legal matters. During the six-year term of Roberto Sandoval (PRI) (2011-2017) with Armando Veytia as prosecutor and Pedro Antonio Enríquez Soto as head of the Judiciary, magistrates, judges, notaries, and other public officials were prosecuted for participating in the so-called Infonavit Fraud (2013-2018) in which, through fraudulent lawsuits, they dispossessed more than 60,000 beneficiaries from different parts of the country. They were even accused of being part of a chain of dispossession through forced transfers of domain by extortion and threats, which in some cases were not judicialized and others are still in process.
