Billionaire businessman Ricardo Salinas, one of Mexico’s richest people, posted a US $25 million bond in the United States to avoid arrest over a debt some of his companies owe to the telecommunications company AT&T, according to a Bloomberg report published on Tuesday.
Grupo Salinas, a conglomerate headed up by Salinas, confirmed in a statement that it had paid a bond, but didn’t refer to the amount.
Bloomberg reported that Salinas — the owner of companies including electronics retailer Elektra, Banco Azteca and TV Azteca — and his companies “posted a joint $25 million bond” before the expiration of a two-week deadline set by Judge Andrea Masley of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
In August, Masley ordered Salinas to “either pay AT&T $20 million within two weeks or be jailed until he did so,” Bloomberg reported.
The dispute between Salinas and AT&T stems from AT&T’s purchase of Salinas’ Mexican telecom business in 2014. In 2020, AT&T sued Salinas, “alleging it was owed money over unpaid taxes dating back to previous ownership,” according to Bloomberg.
“Salinas’ companies disputed this but lost, and were found to be in contempt of court,” the news agency reported.
“When that finding of contempt also failed to recover payment,” Masley “found Salinas personally to be in contempt” and thus ordered him to make the $20 million payment, Bloomberg reported.
“The previously unreported order also included Francisco Borrego, a top Salinas operative who serves as the general counsel to his companies,” Bloomberg reported.
“… Salinas and his companies posted a joint $25 million bond before the two-week deadline set by Masley, but are also appealing the ruling. A representative for Grupo Salinas did not respond to a request for comment,” stated the news agency’s report.
Grupo Salinas expressed confidence that the “definitive ruling” will be “favorable to us.”
Marcelo Rochabrún, Bloomberg’s bureau chief in Peru and the author of the report, shared on social media the final page of Masley’s court order from August.
It states that Grupo Azteca, Banco Azteca, Salinas and Borrego are “in contempt of the court’s Turnover Order” and “are fined “$20 million jointly and severally.”
It also says that Grupo Azteca, Banco Azteca, Salinas and Borrego “shall pay the $20 million within 14 days of the date of this order [Aug. 12] or Salinas and Borrego shall be incarcerated until such time as they either pay the entirety of the penalty resulting from this decision or they comply with the Turnover Order.”
Sheinbaum weighs in
President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has accused Salinas and his companies of failing to pay billions in taxes allegedly owed in Mexico, was asked at her Wednesday morning press conference whether her government had information about the bond Salinas posted.
“The information we have is that which everyone knows about,” she said.
“We don’t have specific information,” Sheinbaum said, adding that her government is requesting more details, presumably from authorities in the United States.
She said that Salinas sold his telecommunications company — Grupo Iusacell — “with debts to tax authorities.”
Sheinbaum accused the 69-year-old businessman of committing fraud in the sale of his telecommunications company to AT&T. She asserted that he sold the company (for US $2.5 billion) “without informing all the conditions of the sale.”
Salinas launches counterattack accusing Sheinbaum of lying about ex-security minister’s extradition
On Wednesday morning, Salinas responded to Sheinbaum’s remarks in an X post in which he referred to her as “la presidente” instead of the correct “la presidenta.”
“La presidente, instead of defaming me, should explain to the Mexican people how it’s possible that in the transfer of the criminal accomplice of @adan_augusto, the criminal Hernán Bermúdez, it took 33 hours to bring him from Paraguay to Mexico.”
The post referred to Senator Adán Augusto López Hernández and the man who served as his security minister when he was governor of Tabasco between 2019 and 2021. Bermúdez, who is currently in a federal prison in México state, is accused of heading up a criminal group called La Barredora.
Salinas’ post included a video of Sheinbaum’s remarks at her press conference that was posted by another X user, who asserted that “there is no evidence of the supposed “$25 million bond in New York.”
On Tuesday night, Salinas had appeared to deny that he had paid a bond in the United States.
“The information that spokespeople of @JesusRCuevas circulated today about a supposed payment to the USA is nothing more than another disinformation campaign of the 4T,” he wrote on the X social media platform.
Jesús Ramírez Cuevas is President Claudia Sheinbaum’s coordinator of advisors. The 4T, or Fourth Transformation, is the name of the political project Sheinbaum leads.
In its statement, Grupo Salinas said that it was “deeply” concerned that the Supreme Court of the State of New York had declared “highly respected foreign citizens” — Salinas and Borrego — to be in contempt of court.
Those two people “haven’t been part of the trial,” the conglomerate said.
Later, Grupo Salinas posted a follow-up statement titled “Lying Has a Cost,” declaring that the conglomerate would pursue a defamation lawsuit due to harassment from President Sheinbaum.
“Once again, we are being used as a distraction to divert public attention and prevent discussion of what is truly important: the highly unusual nine-hour stopover in Chiapas, where, coincidentally, former President López Obrador resides, of the plane that transported Hernán Bermúdez Requena,” the statement reads.
According to available flight information, the airplane returning Bermúdez to Mexico made two layovers before arriving in Toluca, the capital of México state, on the evening of Sept. 18. After departing Asunción, Paraguay, on Sept. 17, flight XB-NWD spent 12 hours in Bogota, Colombia, before making an additional six-hour layover in Tapachula, Chiapas.
The statement from Grupo Salinas also accuses the former and current administrations of mentioning its CEO on over 200 occasions just during morning press conferences.
With reports from Bloomberg
