Mexico’s Supreme Court Resolves First Grupo Salinas Tax Lawsuit: 33 Billion Owing

ByIvan Evair Saldaña

This article by Ivan Evair Saldaña originally appeared in the November 13, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico. The full Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) began its review of seven of the nine multi-million-dollar tax lawsuits facing Grupo Salinas companies this Thursday, in a swift session marked by broad consensus. In its first 34 minutes, the justices unanimously resolved three cases, including the largest one involving Grupo Elektra, upholding a lower court ruling that requires the company to pay a tax debt of 33,306,476,459 pesos, stemming from Income Tax, surcharges, fines, and updates corresponding to the 2013 fiscal year.

Previously, they also resolved a recusal motion filed by Elektra against Justice Lenia Batres Guadarrama. In this matter, the new full court overturned the precedent set by the now-defunct chambers of the Court, which had removed the justice from two other cases brought by the conglomerate based on the argument of a possible risk of bias due to her “animus” against Ricardo Salinas Pliego and his companies, expressed on social media in 2020 and 2021.

At the start of the session, the Secretary General of Agreements, Rafael Coello Cetina, clarified that the items on the list—including those concerning Grupo Salinas—were first published on November 7, making their discussion legal. This is particularly relevant given Ricardo Salinas Pliego’s claims on social media that the legal deadline was not respected. Article 17 of the Court’s Rules of Procedure establishes a three-day period, and in this case, five days had elapsed.

Elektra’s largest lawsuit in the Court, under the direct review appeal 6321/2024, was dismissed through a claim by the Ministry of Finance that revoked the agreement of August 21, 2024 by the then Chief Justice, Norma Piña, which admitted said litigation to processing.

In the approved project of Minister Arístides García Guerrero, the Plenary determined that the admission of the litigation was not correct because it lacks exceptional constitutional interest regarding the Income Tax Law, since there are precedents in the high court that have already resolved the constitutional issues raised.