Salinas Pliego Did Not Pay Tax Debt, Still Negotiating

ByMexico Solidarity

This article originally appeared in the January 24, 2026 edition of Sin Embargo.

Mexico City. Magnate Ricardo Salinas Pliego failed to pay 51 billion pesos in tax debts owed to the Tax Administration Service (SAT) yesterday. After the deadline for a discount of up to 39 percent, as stipulated by law, expired, his assets, bank accounts, and companies’ property can now be seized.

Two sources confirmed to SinEmbargo that as of last night, Grupo Salinas was holding working sessions with SAT authorities to try to negotiate the payment of the debt, but that there are no signs that it has been finalized.

The tycoon has also not commented on the matter on his social media, where he has limited himself to sharing images of his trip to the Caribbean.

Grupo Salinas has faced a debt of more than 74 billion for 16 years, since it refused to settle it through a dilatory legal strategy that, in November, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) put an end to.

Yesterday, the SAT, the federal government’s tax collection agency, reported that the five-day period it granted to Grupo Salinas to express its decision to pay the 51 billion pesos and be able to access a discount of up to 39 percent, as established by the Federal Tax Code, had expired.

The head of the institution, Antonio Martínez Dagnino, reported that Grupo Salinas received the payment notification on Friday and at that moment the five business days began, which ended yesterday, Friday the 23rd. “The Federal Tax Code establishes that from the moment that notification takes effect, which was last week, there are five days, which would be this week,” said the official at the morning press conference of President Claudia Sheinbaum, on Monday the 19th.

Yesterday, without mentioning the deadline for him to pay his debt, Salinas Pliego posted a photograph on his social media accounts in which he poses armed with an antique revolver and a navy blue cap with the initials MACC of his Anti-Crime and Corruption Movement, which advocates for “life, property and liberty”, as he announced last year.

“We will continue the cultural battle for a better Mexico!!! Let the #TabascoCartel stop destroying the country and robbing us with impunity, don’t let them,” he wrote.

And on Thursday, the president of Grupo Salinas attended the 30th anniversary celebration of the entertainment program Ventaneando on TV Azteca, where he said that his journey “has not been easy.” He asserted that government officials “strike hard at working people” and give very little in return. He added that he loves taking vacations in Miami, but wouldn’t want to be in that country in “exile,” emphasizing that “this is what’s at stake.”