The Trials & Tribulations of Tío Richi

ByCarlos Fernández-Vega

This column by Carlos Fernández-Vega originally appeared in the November 13, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Mexico Solidarity Media, or the Mexico Solidarity Project.

As the saying goes, throughout the neoliberal regime Ricardo Salinas Pliego left no stone unturned, and from starting as a simple import manager at his father’s store (Salinas y Rocha) in 1981, from 1993 onwards (already with Imevisión in his pocket and thanks to the “help” of Raúl Salinas de Gortari) he magically became one of the few homegrown billionaires on the Forbes list with businesses in practically every economic sector: retail, mining, open and cable television, landline and mobile telephony, Internet, energy, finance, soccer, the betting industry, fertilizers and so many others, thanks, in large part, to the State (via concessions, licenses and permits) that he abhors, plus murky political and judicial relationships that facilitated his climb in socio-economic rank, since he acknowledged: “I was poor.” That’s why, without a doubt, he sings with Molotov that until 2018 “we were a really badass country”.

The baron of small installments and usurious interest rates1 operates under one premise: “Between the homeland and personal wealth, there is never any doubt: personal wealth comes first, and then, too,” and consequently, today he disguises himself as a “martyr of democracy,” because, after 16 years of dirty litigation, his time has come: this Thursday, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation will rule against him, so he must pay every last cent of taxes evaded since at least 2008, and now without the protection of “judges” (such as Norma Piña and Luis María Aguilar) and politicians at his service.

Keenly aware of impending tax , the ultra-right winger Ricardo Salinas Pliego took his yacht to the Pacific, sailing to El Salvador to meet with US-groomed President Bukelele.

And Ricardo Salinas Pliego, now a self-proclaimed fervent follower of Our Lady of Guadalupe, is no longer feeling the full force of the problem, because it’s not just the massive tax evasion and the hefty bill he owes the Mexican Tax Administration Service (SAT), nor the possibility of ending up in a New York jail, but now a couple of his companies (read: casinos) are accused of allegedly laundering money, which is also a serious matter.


Regarding the latter, La Jornada (Dora Villanueva) reported it as follows: “The Ministry of Finance identified 13 casinos where operations possibly related to money laundering were detected. ‘Due to their high financial risk,’ they were blocked by the Financial Intelligence Unit ‘to prevent them from being used by organized crime,’ and the Ministry of the Interior ordered the immediate suspension of the establishments.”

The websites bet365.mx & Betano are operated by a subsidiary of TV Azteca: both have been blocked by the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Finance as part of a money laundering investigation.

Of that universe, two are subsidiaries of TV Azteca (Ganador Azteca and Operadora Ganador TV Azteca), whose permits (for 25 years, renewable) were granted in 2018 as a parting gift from Enrique Peña Nieto. This is similar to what Santiago Creel Miranda did as Secretary of the Interior, although with a difference: in 2005, shortly before leaving that post, he granted more than 300 permits for this activity (mostly to Televisa) as a quid pro quo for the network to “vigorously” promote him on its screens as the PAN candidate for President of the Republic, something that, incidentally, backfired spectacularly. Incidentally, “Ganador Azteca is also a defendant in the lawsuit filed by the network’s creditors in the Supreme Court of the State of New York” (ibid.).

And if the one with the small installments writhes and kicks about paying taxes and the possibility of visiting a New York jail, then the presumption that money is laundered in those two casinos he owns, well, it gives him a fever, and that’s why he got on his $150 million boat to be as far away from Mexican territory as possible.

Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the Salinas Pliego case: “All the investigations, both those conducted by the Tax Administration Service (SAT) and those conducted by the Financial Intelligence Unit, have legal basis; there is nothing political about them. Even in the case of the tax debt, some of these issues date back to 2008. So, everything has legal basis,” including evidence of money laundering.

  1. Ricardo Salinas Pliego is the owner of the Elektra retail chain, a ubiquitious presence across Mexico preying on the undercompensated workers of Mexico by offering weekly payment plans for consumer goods. ↩︎