Víctor Álvarez Puga, the king of fake invoices in the sights of Mexican justice

Attorney Víctor Álvarez Puga, husband of famous television host Inés Gómez Mont, is the fabric that unites the common thread among politicians, businessmen, and drug traffickers in Mexico: the use of invoicing companies to evade taxes and launder money. After several years in exile with his wife in the United States, where he continued to enjoy the wealth he amassed through his illicit businesses, the lawyer, whom the Mexican government identifies as the head of a huge network of shell companies, has been detained at an immigration detention center in Miami, Florida. He has an Interpol red notice against him, and there is a criminal arrest warrant for him in Mexico, but the lawyer slipped up due to issues with his immigration status in the United States.

This could present a golden opportunity for Claudia Sheinbaum’s government to lay its hands on Álvarez Puga, a symbol of the impunity afforded by enormous fortunes — regardless of their origin — and ties to a country’s upper echelons, both legal and criminal. If Washington sends him to Mexico, taking advantage of his immigration detention, Álvarez Puga would be the second fugitive to be repatriated in this manner in a matter of months. In August, the U.S. handed Carlos Treviño — the former Pemex director accused of corruption — over to Mexico after having detained him for immigration irregularities. It remains to be seen whether this will become an alternative for the bilateral exchange of criminals outside the bureaucratic extradition process.

In 2010, the government had already targeted the lawyer and his brother, Alejandro, with whom he founded the firm Álvarez Puga & Associates, through an audit of the SAT, the tax collection agency. The attempt was unsuccessful. Now, the Attorney General’s Office accuses the lawyer and Gómez Mont of organized crime, embezzlement of public funds, and money laundering. The sting was an accusation from the Public Prosecutor’s Office against the couple, following an investigation that documented the misappropriation of three billion pesos (about $145 million) from the Interior Ministry during the administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto. Part of that money — which was supposed to be used to improve the country’s prisons, according to the complaint — ended up directly in the bank accounts of Álvarez Puga and Gómez Mont, following a complex process of transfers between companies in their network, a typical money laundering operation.

According to authorities, the shell companies, which had no infrastructure or staff but pretended to provide services, carried out around 1,500 financial transactions with the aim of hiding the money trail. Approximately three million pesos were deposited into the accounts of Álvarez Puga and his wife. The lawyer, in fact, was on the payroll of one of the companies through which funds were diverted from the Interior Ministry. The head of the agency at the time was Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Peña Nieto’s strongman in security matters, who has never spoken out on the matter. A judge ordered the arrest of several front men and the former head of the prisons agency under the Interior Ministry, Eduardo Guerrero, the highest-ranking official targeted. The lawyer’s brother was also involved in this embezzlement case, although he was not included in the judge’s arrest warrants.

The case against Álvarez Puga and Gómez Mont was assembled by the Tax Attorney General’s Office during the first half of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration. The tax authority identified the lawyer as the owner of the largest network of shell companies created to issue fake invoices, and, moreover, as the mastermind behind this model of embezzlement and laundering of funds, the means by which millions of dollars are siphoned off each year, perhaps Mexico’s greatest challenge in terms of corruption. Not only because of the size of the network, but also because of its accomplices and beneficiaries, the investigation against the lawyer was the target of widespread friendly fire within the government itself.

Sources consulted by EL PAÍS report that the Tax Attorney General’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office were only able to bring Álvarez Puga before a judge after certain powerful officials left the government. Before that, the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), Mexico’s anti-money laundering agency, according to the sources, was preparing a deal that would allow Gómez Mont to cover her tax debts and evade the scrutiny of justice. Another obstacle stemmed from the fact that the network of beneficiaries of Álvarez Puga’s invoicing schemes included the son of an influential member of Morena, the ruling party, the son of a former Supreme Court magistrate, and the son of a former Secretary of the Interior and National Action Party legislator, the sources added. The arrest warrant finally dismantled the impunity schemes and allowed for the issuance of an Interpol red notice.

After fleeing to the United States, Gómez Mont defended her name and denied having benefited from the embezzlement at the Interior Ministry. “They put me on the same level as a drug trafficker or terrorist. I think it’s unfair,” she said. She and her husband continued to enjoy their wealth in Florida. They bought a mansion that once belonged to Cher for $15 million and acquired two houses in Miami and Palm Beach worth $11 million. The couple also rented an apartment in the luxurious Art Plaza in Miami, for which they were charged $2,800 a month. The real estate agency sued them for nonpayment of rent. These are signs that, although fugitives, Gómez Mont and Álvarez Puga had been traceable all this time. The justice system just hadn’t started working.

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