Thursday will be, barring unforeseen circumstances, a fateful day for the fifth richest man in Mexico. After postponing the outcome for more than a decade, Ricardo Salinas Pliego now faces his most critical week in court, which is preparing to give him a definitive setback. The Supreme Court (SCJN) will resolve on November 13 seven of the nine trials that the tycoon has opened for debts with the treasury: four are main trials and three others will culminate thanks to secondary trials that will affect the primary ones. In total, the cases that will be resolved in the next few days amount to just over 35,000 million pesos, practically the entire amount that the businessman is contesting with the Tax Service (SAT) at the High Court. The long wait, which previously worked in their favor, has now turned against them, and to the millionaire figure they will have to add fines and surcharges to compensate the public treasury for the delay in payments. According to the Government, the total amount would amount to approximately 48,000 million pesos. There will be no more extensions.
The new Supreme Court has stepped up to resolve a handful of cases that are of great importance to the Executive Branch, both practically and symbolically. President Claudia Sheinbaum needs sources of financing to support the numerous social programs on which her political project is based, and the only way to circumvent, even temporarily, the feared tax reform, is to plug the holes through which the money that should already enter public coffers passes. There are two billion pesos blocked in the courts for disputed tax credits, a juicy loot of which Salinas Pliego is part with a smaller percentage, but which gives face and arguments to one of the president’s warhorses.
Sheinbaum continues the fight started by his predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and is refining measures to address the more sophisticated methods by which large debtors have avoided their tax responsibilities, as well as subsequent challenges at every stage of the process. Salinas Pliego is, for the Morenoist government, the living image of these delaying techniques that led them to drag out trials for fiscal years between 17 and 15 years ago, long before the self-proclaimed Fourth Transformation came to power.
Thus, the nine main trials originally faced by the entrepreneur in the Supreme Court have resulted in 101 open secondary matters, most of which will be dismissed after this Thursday. In a final attempt to postpone the outcome, the businessman attempted last week to exclude several ministers from some trials. In some cases, the request reached the entire plenary session, but was rejected by the Constitutional Court and denounced as another delaying tactic, which could lead to a fine.
The tax process that concentrates all expectations arrives at a particularly delicate moment for the owner of Elektra. The Salinas Group has other judicial fronts open on the other side of the border which not only do not offer definitive victories but threaten every day to increase the amount that the entrepreneur will have to pay once the trials are concluded. Its creditors in the United States have been demanding payment of a debt of 400 million dollars for years, a figure which due to the delay has already risen to 580 million. The case took on a public and international dimension after the involvement of the Mexican state, when American investors filed a request for arbitration against Mexico, which they believed was ultimately responsible for the “abuse of the judicial system in favor of TV Azteca”, the company against which they have the case.
The television had managed to convince a court in Mexico City to declare in 2022 that the Covid-19 pandemic constituted a force majeure that prevented it from meeting its financial obligations, but a federal judge two weeks ago revoked the precautionary measure that protected it. Meanwhile, the main trial is moving full steam ahead in another New York court, which a few days ago set a deadline until this Wednesday for the respective parties to present their evidentiary plan and specify whether or not they will proceed with a stay motion to resolve the matter through private arbitration.
There are many fronts and they are besieging the billionaire, who is trying to counteract in public opinion what is becoming increasingly difficult in the courts. The Salinas Group released a statement on Sunday in which it regrets that this week will see “the end of the independence of the judiciary”, since the projects on which the Supreme Court will vote on Thursday are contrary to its interests and will presumably be approved with the support of the majority of ministers, generally similar to the intentions of the Executive. Having exhausted the national channels, the business conglomerate plans to appeal to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and does not give up on denouncing the SAT, which it accuses of carrying out “tax extortion” which would lead, according to the aforementioned group, to double charges and taxes for which its companies have not been checked.
The Salinas Group’s statements have accumulated 2,000 responses on social networks. “The amount they intend to collect is equivalent to two days of public spending. They achieve nothing other than the destruction of a business group that serves more than 30 million customers and in which more than 200,000 families live”, argued the tycoon on Monday in the context of that verbal dispute, which often ends in the president’s morning conferences.
Salinas Pliego, who has not closed the door to direct confrontation with the Executive from the political arena, has attempted several times to convince the Government to sit down and negotiate its debts, but the refusal has been categorical each time. All the state’s resources have been used to collect these credits in full, and this time it is a countdown that only puts pressure on the entrepreneur.
