MEXICO’S President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants the extensive art collection held by Citigroup, Inc.’s local unit, with works by artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, to remain in the country as the bank exits part of its business.

The US bank is preparing to sell its Mexican retail operation, known as Citibanamex, and the fate of the art and heritage pieces owned by its Fomento Cultural Banamex foundation have become the focus of debate. The institution, headquartered in an 18^th century baroque palace in Mexico City’s downtown, is one of Mexico’s biggest patrons of arts and culture in the country, and manages historical buildings.

“We’re talking about buildings and art collections of the best painters of Mexico and of the world,” AMLO, as the president is known, said at a press briefing on Monday, his first day back in public after recovering from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). “It’s cultural patrimony, and we’re looking for it to stay in our country.”

Citigroup, Inc. is planning to exit retail-banking operations in Mexico, where it has its largest branch network in the world, as part of Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser’s continued push to overhaul the firm’s strategy.

The sale of one of Mexico’s oldest banks is testing AMLO’s nationalist impulses since its announcement a week ago, with the president calling for the bank to be acquired by Mexican investors. On Sunday, Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard proposed on Twitter that the foundation’s collection be turned over to the state, to make up for a 1990s bank bailout that saddled the federal government with debt.

Nevertheless, the president, who has directed his administration to go after tax evaders to boost budget revenue, said that his government would not try to a put a wrench in a sale that could generate a significant sum for state coffers.

“We’re going to look at the legal aspects but we do not want to create problems for the sale or create obstacles, because we want to show that in Mexico there is true rule of law and there are guarantees for investors,” he said.

‘INVALUABLE’
The collection includes over 600 paintings, drawings and sculptures together with colonial buildings in several Mexican cities, said Alberto Gomez Alcala, a Citibanamex director, adding that its total value is not publicly available. The art’s future under a new owner remains uncertain, though he expected that the buyer would follow tradition and keep the objects in Mexico.

“It will be sold all together, not one part here, and another part there. Everything will be sold under the umbrella of the National Bank of Mexico,” Mr. Gomez Alcala said in a call with reporters last week. “The number of pesos or cents doesn’t matter. For us, it’s invaluable. It’s a signature part of the brand.” — Bloomberg

AMSTERDAM — A six-year cold case investigation into the betrayal of Anne Frank has identified a surprising suspect in the mystery of how the Nazis found the hiding place of the famous diarist in 1944.

Anne and seven other Jews were discovered by the Nazis on Aug. 4 of that year, after they had hid for nearly two years in a secret annex above a canal-side warehouse in Amsterdam. All were deported and Anne died in the Bergen Belsen camp at age 15.

A team that included retired US FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and around 20 historians, criminologists, and data specialists identified a relatively unknown figure, Jewish notary Arnold van den Bergh, as a leading suspect in revealing the hideout.

Some other experts emphasized that the evidence against him was not conclusive.

Investigating team member Pieter van Twisk said the crucial piece of new evidence was an unsigned note to Anne’s father Otto found in an old post-war investigation dossier, specifically naming Mr. Van den Bergh and alleging he passed on the information.

The note said Mr. Van den Bergh had access to addresses where Jews were hiding as a member of Amsterdam’s wartime Jewish Council and had passed lists of such addresses to the Nazis to save his own family.

Mr. Van Twisk said only four out of initial 32 names remained following the research, with Mr. Van den Bergh the lead suspect.

Investigators confirmed that Otto, the only member of the family to survive the war, was aware of the note but chose never to speak of it publicly.

Mr. Van Twisk speculated that Frank’s reasons to remain silent about the allegation were likely that he could not be sure it was true, that he would not want information to become public that could feed further anti-Semitism, and that he would not want Mr. Van den Bergh’s three daughters to be blamed for something their father might have done.

Otto “had been in Auschwitz,” Mr. Van Twisk said. “He knew that people in difficult situations sometimes do things that cannot be morally justified.”

While other members of the Jewish Council were deported in 1943, Mr. Van den Bergh was able to remain in the Netherlands. He died in 1950.

Historian Erik Somers of the Dutch NIOD institute for war, holocaust and genocide studies praised the extensive investigation, but was skeptical of its conclusion.

He questioned the centrality of the anonymous note in the arguments for Mr. Van den Bergh’s responsibility and said the team made assumptions about wartime Amsterdam Jewish institutions that are not supported by other historical research.

According to Mr. Somers there are many possible reasons Mr. Van den Bergh was never deported as “he was a very influential man.”

Miep Gies, one of the family’s helpers, kept Anne’s diary safe until Otto returned and first published it in 1947. It has since been translated into 60 languages and captured the imagination of millions of readers worldwide.

The Anne Frank House Foundation was not involved in the cold case investigation but shared information from its archives to assist.

Director Ronald Leopold said the research had “generated important new information and a fascinating hypothesis that merits further research.”

Using modern research techniques, a master database was compiled with lists of Dutch collaborators, informants, historic documents, police records, and prior research to uncover new leads.

Dozens of scenarios and locations of suspects were visualized on a map to identify a betrayer, based on knowledge of the hiding place, motive and opportunity.

The findings of the new research will be published in a book by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, The Betrayal of Anne Frank, which will be released on Tuesday.

The director of Dutch Jewish organization CIDI which combats anti-Semitism told Reuters she hoped the book would provide insight into the war-time circumstances of Amsterdam’s Jewish population.

“If this turns into ‘the Jews did it’ that would be unfortunate. The Nazis were ultimately responsible,” Hanna Luden of CIDI said. — Reuters