Ricardo Salinas Pliego must pay off his debts to the Treasury and disburse around 50 billion pesos into public coffers. The Supreme Court this Thursday unanimously ratified the tax credits that the businessman contested at the SAT of Justice, which had already condemned him in all previous cases. The process ended before the High Court which ruled, as expected, against the interests of the billionaire, who initially risked the payment of 35,000 million pesos spread across seven legal cases. This figure has grown to incorporate late payment surcharges, which in some cases are up to 17 years. The largest dispute amounts to almost 18.5 billion and was the first to be resolved by the Plenary, which also approved a fine for the entrepreneur for attempting to recuse ministers Yasmín Esquivel and Lenia Batres from one of the related appeals, in which the latter abstained from participating. After this day, which puts an end to a journey that has lasted years, only two trials will remain to be resolved in Court for an initial value of just over 700 million.
The projects voted by ministers on Thursday – and which were debated loudly due to “the importance of the issues in public opinion”, according to president Hugo Aguilar – are similar to each other and do not go into the merits of the issues raised by the owner of Elektra, the company involved in the trials. The High Court has dismissed the company’s audit appeals – or accepted the Treasury’s claims against them – based on a handful of arguments about the nature or extent of the issues.
In some cases they argued that these are not questions of constitutionality (the Supreme Court’s scope of analysis) and, in others, that, despite the existence of questions in that scope, they are not of exceptional interest in that matter or in human rights matters and, therefore, would not give rise to a new decision of the Court, which already has numerous precedents on similar tax issues that can serve as a reference.
In short, the action of the High Court validated the procedure of the collegiate courts, which had already ruled against the millionaire. Salinas Pliego, in the midst of an attack against Claudia Sheinbaum’s Moreno government, had declared the day before from El Salvador that she expected “nothing different” from the sense in which the judges ruled. “The false and politicized Court has already made its decision,” he said. Lower courts, however, generally resolved their cases before judicial elections took place and did so in the same direction. The various courts have maintained that the complaints raised by the company are “inoperative” because they make the unconstitutionality of the contested provisions fall on circumstantial issues, such as a particular situation of the company, the alleged abusive use of a law or the imprecision of a wording. That is, they do not touch the heart of the norm.
The trials faced today by Elektra, which seem historic due to the public and symbolic dimension they have acquired, cover fiscal years ranging from 2008 to 2013 and have to do with an improper calculation of the company’s losses. This calculation, which the tax service considered inflated, reduced the taxes that the company had to pay, which benefited from a tax benefit that did not correspond to it. SAT then demanded the difference that remained to be paid, but the company argued until the end. Although the national routes were sold out this Thursday, the business conglomerate announced that it will appeal to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and does not rule out suing the public body, which it accuses of carrying out “tax extortion”.
This Thursday’s legal cases were of vital importance for the Executive, which has made the fight against large debtors one of its strong points. The president needs to increase revenues to be able to support the social programs that support her project without resorting to tax reform which she denies. To get around the problem it is closing the holes through which money that should already be entering public coffers slips. There are two billion pesos stuck in the courts over disputed tax credits. The amount owed by the businessman is not the largest, but it is the one that concentrates the greatest symbolic burden on the president. The refusal between Salinas Pliego and Sheinbaum is mutual and does nothing but fuel expectations about a dispute which, as well as in the courts, is broadcast in real time on the networks and in the president’s morning conferences. Winning the public’s favor has become as important as winning the actual case.
One of the reproaches that the president has repeatedly made is the use of dilatory techniques to delay compliance with sentences favorable to the SAT. Without going further, the nine main trials originally faced by the entrepreneur before the Supreme Court resulted in 101 secondary matters, most at the request of the business group. However, it did not help to avoid the final outcome. The Supreme Court, coming out of the polls, accelerated and sent seven of them this Thursday, all unanimously with some concurrent votes from ministers who qualified their position. The fifth richest man in Mexico will have to pay.
