Walmart and Spanish BBVA Bancomer owe Mexico’s IRS 500 Million Dollars Tax Fraud

Mexico’s is asking 10 large corporations to pay back billions of dollars they owe due to tax evasion and fraud.

The progressive president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) explained at his daily morning press conference that just 10 companies awn 50 thousand million pesos to México’s IRS, its about $2.2 billion dollars, and some of those companies where under criminal investigation.

Walmart have had several lawsuits all over the world due to corruption scandals in several countries. Last year, Walmart had to pay billions to the treasury Department and Exchange Commission for cases of fraud committed in Brazil India and Mexico.

Through confidential Walmart documents, The New Yirk Times identified 19 store sites across Mexico that were the target of Walmart de Mexico’s bribes. The Times then matched information about specific bribes against permit records for each site. Clear patterns emerged. Over and over, for example, the dates of bribe payments coincided with dates when critical permits were issued. Again and again, the strictly forbidden became miraculously attainable.

Thanks to eight bribe payments totaling $341,000, for example, Walmart built a Sam’s Club in one of Mexico City’s most densely populated neighborhoods, near the Basílica de Guadalupe, without a construction license, or an environmental permit, or an urban impact assessment, or even a traffic permit. Thanks to nine bribe payments totaling $765,000, Walmart built a vast refrigerated distribution center in an environmentally fragile flood basin north of Mexico City, in an area where electricity was so scarce that many smaller developers were turned away.

The most scandalous was a $50 thousand dollar bribe in a small town to build a Walmat next to a historic Pyramid.

“These companies treat Mexico as a country to be conquered because they got away with this for many years, but it is over!” AMLO said during his press conference.

And speaking of times of conquistadors, Spain’s bank BBVA Bancomer, is one of those 10 corporations that though falsification of involves and other corrupt tactics managed to avoid $500 million dollars in taxes in Mexico.

Bancomer didn’t seem to have gotten the message and went on to offer more quid pro quo to build banks in remote towns, something Bancomer and another Banks never wanted to do forcing the AMLO to incorporate and opened a bank called Bamco del Bienestar with 2700 new bank, so senior citizens and people with disabilities could get their pension. To their surprise AMLO said, “No.”

As incredible as it might sound Walmart responded to AMLO and Mexican authorities that they will go to and stay in court until the year 2030.

Mexico was ranked the 3th country with more billionaires after the United States and China. This, can leave anyone scratching their heads, and think that perhaps Mexico’s 60% poverty rate has nothing to do with Mexico and more to do with the wave of Corporations constantly stealing, cheating, corrupting, and lying to gain profits at the backs of its people, the environment, small business, and tax payers.

Source: The New York Times