Salinas Pliego faces ruin. His strategy cornered him

For years, Ricardo Salinas Pliego managed to evade billions in taxes with the help of the former Judicial Branch. Now, after the renewal of a large part of his staff, the owner of Grupo Salinas is being forced to catch up, not only with the tax debt he has in Mexico, but also with the debts he acquired abroad.

Mexico City, October 27 (However).- In this chapter of VERSUSjournalists Alina Duarte, Ana Lilia Pérez, Perla Velázquez and Alejandro Páez Varela analyze how the Mexican businessman Ricardos Salinas Pliegoowner of Salinas Groupis facing the results of years of evading taxes.

In his first intervention, Ana Lilia Pérez considered that Salinas Pliego It is the most obvious example of how neoliberal governments privileged a few, to whom not only were the goods of the Statebut they also enjoyed years of tax forgiveness, despite which they accumulated a million-dollar debt with the Tax Administration Service (SAT).

“Salinas Pliego is the clearest, most palpable example of harmful neoliberal policies, of government policies that privileged the interest of a few, whom they made billionaires by giving them assets of the Nation, giving them very lucrative contracts and applying a policy in which it was the absolute privilege,” commented the journalist.

“The obvious example is in how during all those periods of governments in which tax forgiveness was valid, something totally immoral, but tax forgiveness was practiced from the Presidency, the arrangements under the table, from the Presidency, from Los Pinos, the tax sector validating those forgiveness,” he added.

“Who did they benefit? The most privileged, those closest to Los Pinos and even so, even with tax pardons, as it was taken for granted that the President was going to favor in this way those who should be the country’s largest taxpayers, but in reality they were the country’s largest evaders, and even with all this, Salinas Pliego refused to pay,” he emphasized.

For his part, Páez Varela highlighted the support that for years the previous Judicial Branch provided to the owner of TV Azteca and Elektra, even in debts abroad, specifically those it maintains with companies in the United States (EU). The journalist also spoke about the debts that he is currently being forced to pay, after the arrival of the new Judiciary, which amounts to billions of pesos, which would leave the Mexican magnate in ruin.

“The issue today is that there is a new Judicial Power and it was its great anchor. The character was anchored there, that was his hope, with the debtors in the United States, with his creditors there. The Judicial Power in Mexico made him ‘unemployed’. Imagine with the debtors here, if he used the Mexican Judicial Power with foreigners, with what here, obviously, he had magistrates, courts, judges in his power, that’s how the character could move courts.”

“I like to repeat that ‘Salinas Pliego has many lawyers and few good ideas’. He is a character who has gone from impunity to blows, from impunity to blows,” he said. “I believe that Salinas Pliego is in the bitterest moment of his life, in the most bitter moment of his life, because if the calculations are correct, he has very little money left for him and his family. That is the reality, the money he has is very little,” Páez Varela stressed.

Meanwhile, Duarte highlighted Salinas Pliego’s recently expressed intention to pay the tax debt he maintains in Mexico, which would respond to his intentions to run for the Presidency in 2030, which would be supported by the Mexican right, which would also have influenced the millionaire to agree to pay the taxes he owes.

“I would like to start by saying why Salinas Pliego thinks of paying now. He is a character who has refused not only during the six-year terms of the Fourth Transformation. What they clarify is that they are debts from at least 17 years ago, where they had been postponed, they had been hidden inside a drawer, in the end no one found out.”

“However, the name of Salinas Pliego is already beginning to be heard, not only as a tax debtor, but as someone who wants to promote a project that can govern even this country. He aligns himself with libertarian narratives and uses his media to begin to demean the functions of the State, calling the Government ‘governmental’, beginning to generate an entire strategy of his narrative to get ahead.”

Likewise, the journalist agreed with Páez Varela that Salinas Pliego no longer has his ally, the previous Judicial Branch, which helped him not pay taxes, to which is added the pressure from the Mexican right to demonstrate that he is free of crimes and that he could be an option in the next presidential elections.

“In the reconfiguration of the right, it no longer has this great ally of the Judiciary, which had allowed it to systematically extend, omit, this debt. It is left without allies that allow it to sustain the debt, but there is also a reconfiguration of the right that pressures it to say that it has no debts and can launch itself,” said Alina Duarte.

Perla Velázquez, during her participation in the debate, emphasized the role of victim that Salinas Pliego has adopted, trying to give an image of “politically persecuted”, distorting the speech in her favor. “All this reminds me a lot now of this aspect that Salinas Pliego is taking as the victim, because he is now playing that role,” said the journalist.

“We already saw him as a usurer. We already saw him as the debtor and now we are seeing him as a person who pretends to be almost, almost like a politically persecuted person, that is, that person that the Government is lying to the people to make him look like a person who does not owe, when in reality we know how much money he owes,” added Perla Velázquez.