According to MVS, the women at the heart of its report are known as edecanes, or hostesses. In their short skirts and high heels, they are a common feature of political and business gatherings in Mexico. Mostly their job is to hand out brochures or accompany people to their seats.
MVS said that after a tip-off, a female reporter answered an advertisement for a hostess job in Mr Gutiérrez’s office at PRI headquarters in Mexico City. It aired what it said were secretly taped recordings in which a woman it claims worked for Mr Gutiérrez can be heard telling the undercover reporter the job requires her to provide sex—“oral or vaginal”—when her boss asks for it, as well as more normal hostess duties. The tape recordings include discussion of salary—11,000 pesos ($850) a month, tax-free, plus tips—and the reporter is told she will be on the PRI’s payroll. “It’s absolute discretion, because obviously he protects his image,” the female voice tells the reporter.
Speaking on air to MVS News, Mr Gutiérrez described the report as “false as all falseness” and said there were no hostesses on the PRI payroll. He was not asked whether the woman on the tape was his employee.
The scandal immediately lit up the airwaves and social-media sites. It puts the PRI in an awkward spot. The party, which ruled Mexico for much of the 20th century, often according to rules it set for itself, returned to power nationwide in 2012 with the election of President Enrique Peña Nieto. It is keen to put its sleazy past behind it. But given the murky relationship between politics and justice in Mexico, investigations often lack credibility. People believe what they choose.