The Álvarez Puga scandal ensnares Mexico’s political, business and celebrity elites

Mexico is awaiting the testimony that attorney Víctor Manuel Álvarez Puga, 50, will have to give before the courts. In the eyes of Mexican authorities, the lawyer is the king of factureras — a scheme that enables the diversion of millions in public funds through fake contracts, money laundering, and tax evasion. The clients of Álvarez Puga — who is facing deportation proceedings in the United States — included influential figures from politics and the judiciary as well as the business world and celebrity circles, according to federal government sources. His return to Mexico — where he is accused of embezzling 2.95-billion-peso ($161 million) from the Interior Ministry in 2016 — is a ticking time bomb, with the names of those who benefited from his illicit activities beating at its core.

This web of complicity explains why the Mexican government has faced multiple obstacles in advancing the case against Álvarez Puga. After managing to delay the charges against him for as long as possible, the lawyer and his wife — the well-known TV host Inés Gómez Mont — had time to flee Mexico and take refuge in Florida, where they have built a multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio. After four years on the run from the Mexican justice system, Álvarez Puga ended up in a detention center in Miami in September over an issue related to his immigration status. The government of Claudia Sheinbaum has taken advantage of this situation to push for his extradition.

EL PAÍS has obtained tax documents that confirm how at least part of the money from the Interior Ministry was laundered when the agency was headed by politician Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who was then one of the closest allies of president Enrique Peña Nieto. The Finance Ministry, under the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, carried out a tax audit of a shell company and a front man linked to the diversion of these funds, which were originally meant to improve security in federal prisons. The documents list the names of 89 people who received deposits throughout 2016 and 2017, justified for tax purposes as payroll or professional fees. It is the tip of the iceberg that offers a glimpse into the kinds of people Álvarez Puga approached. This newspaper has contacted those named and collected their comments in several cases. Others declined to respond.

The papers include Othón de León Arriola, grandson of Elba Esther Gordillo, the once-powerful teachers’ union leader SNTE; De León Arriola received 1.3 million pesos ($71,200) from Álvarez Puga’s invoicing network. Also listed is Arturo Montiel Yáñez, eldest son of Arturo Montiel Rojas — former governor of the State of Mexico and patriarch of the PRI’s Atlacomulco Group; tax records show that Montiel Yáñez, a member of the PVEM, an ally of the ruling party Morena, collected 865,800 pesos ($47,400). Another name in the documents is Ricardo Monreal Pérez, the eldest son of Ricardo Monreal Ávila, the influential Morena caucus leader in the lower house, former senator, and former presidential hopeful; Monreal Pérez received deposits totaling 275,000 pesos ($15,050). Another prominent figure is Rodrigo Ripstein Kaim, ex-husband of businesswoman Ninfa Salinas — the daughter of Ricardo Salinas Pliego — with whom he has three children; Ripstein received deposits totaling 11.3 million pesos ($618,000). Also listed is athlete and politician Fernando Reina Iglesias, who received 700,000 pesos ($38,300); at the time of the deposits, Reina was married to actress and TV host Galilea Montijo, one of Inés Gómez Mont’s closest friends.

When asked about the deposits, De León Arriola explained that the money he received from Álvarez Puga was payment of a debt the lawyer owed his late mother, Mónica Arriola. “He owed her money, and that was how he made the payment,” he told EL PAÍS. Congressman Monreal, for his part, stated through a spokesperson that his son “is not involved in politics or public life.” A representative for Galilea Montijo indicated that this matter has nothing to do with the television host. “It’s not something we want to get involved in,” she said, referring to Montijo’s statement in late 2021 that neither she nor her then-husband had any business dealings with Álvarez Puga or Gómez Mont, who had already fled to the United States. As for Ninfa Salinas, she indicated through a spokesperson from her business group that she would not comment on the matter. Finally, Montiel did not respond to messages sent to her cell phone.

The amounts paid to these individuals are documented in the tax returns of the firm Gupea Construcciones, S.A. de C.V., and of the front man Ismael Infante Loredo, both linked to Álvarez Puga. The company, located in a small private residence in a low-income neighborhood of San Luis Potosí, and the front man, a laborer who lives in the same state, reported to the tax authorities having paid 125 million pesos ($6.84 million) in “payroll and fees” in 2016 and 2017. The documentation obtained by this newspaper shows that Álvarez Puga himself was on the payroll and received 10.9 million pesos ($$596,000). Meanwhile, his wife, Gómez Mont, mother Alma Rosa Puga and ex-wife Rosario Arnaud de la Torre received 7.4 million pesos ($405,000), 285,000 pesos ($15,600), and 3.5 million pesos ($192,000), respectively. Alongside the lawyer, Arnaud de la Torre appears as a shareholder in some companies in Mexico and owns a luxury apartment worth $2.5 million in Miami, Florida, through the company Grupogreca LLC.

The tax records also list Rodrigo de Zulueta Rodrigo, who would later become the coordinator of Regional Administration of the Federal Judiciary Council (later transformed into the Judicial Administration Body), noted as having received 3.9 million pesos ($213,000). Other names include Ricardo Pelusi Barriguete (26.6 million pesos, $1.45 million) and Ileana Salazar Penagos (2.2 million pesos, $120,000), shareholders of the company Connect Telecom; Eduardo Valenzuela Guzmán (7.7 million pesos, $421,000), identified by the Finance Ministry as Álvarez Puga’s driver; Edgar Joel Tapia Escoto (2.2 million pesos, $120,000), legal representative of the company that built Peña Nieto’s “white house”; Juan Ignacio Rivero Celorio (1 million pesos, $55,000), executive at the Mexican College of Public Accountants; and Miguel Marengo Canales (1.2 million pesos, $66,000), identified as a front man for Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, former member of the National Action Party (PAN) and now an ally of Morena.

Also appearing are former public officials, such as José Omar Gutiérrez Bayardi (1.4 million pesos, $77,000), executive in the Office of the Presidency and at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) during Felipe Calderón’s administration; Leonel Daniel Ortiz Noriega (350,000 pesos, $19,000), director of material resources at the Sonora State Health Secretariat under PRI governor Claudia Pavlovich; Patricio de la Peña (80,000 pesos, $4,400), secretary of labor under PRI governor Roberto Borge in Quintana Roo and ex-husband of singer and actress Mariana Ochoa; Juan Rojas Nájera (65,000 pesos, $3,550), former director of interinstitutional liaison at Mexico’s National Anti-Corruption System (SNA); and Gerardo González Meza (83,000 pesos, $4,540), Notary 79 in Mexico City.

Of all these beneficiaries, authorities only targeted Álvarez Puga, considered the main architect of the invoicing network, and Gómez Mont, his alleged accomplice, along with a handful of mid-level Interior Ministry officials and front men.

Front men in Mexico and the United States

Álvarez Puga, born in Chiapas in 1975, began his empire with the help of Sergio Castro López, an accountant from Oaxaca. Partners in several consulting firms, they helped employers subcontract their workers through outsourcing schemes to evade social security payments, one of the biggest tax frauds in Mexico. Álvarez Puga’s brother, Alejandro, joined the business, and together they founded dozens of companies. Their firm, Álvarez Puga & Associates, was audited in 2010 by Mexico’s tax authority SAT, for evidence of corruption, but the investigation was unsuccessful.

It was during that decade that Álvarez Puga made the leap to fractueras fraud — a type of financial crime in Mexico where fake companies issue invoices (facturas) for goods or services that don’t actually exist. This criminal model involves creating companies that, without real infrastructure or resources, simulate the sale of goods or provision of services, even issuing official tax receipts that justify the massive amounts of money flowing through their accounts or allow for tax deductions. It is a black hole through which millions of dollars are drained from the public treasury and one of Mexico’s greatest challenges in combating corruption. During López Obrador’s administration, tax authorities identified Álvarez Puga as the mastermind behind this monumental fractureras scheme and tried to dismantle it. But they faced an uphill battle as the lawyer had built a network of complicity network with high-level officials in both the government and the judiciary.

A judge ordered the arrest of Álvarez Puga and Gómez Mont in September, and a month later, Interpol issued a red notice for their capture abroad. The couple fled to Florida, where, thanks to a network of operators and front men, they built a real estate fortune, which EL PAÍS has been documenting. A key figure in this network is Jonathan Choghi, a Mexican national based in Florida, where he formally works for a law firm that channels foreign investments. Since 2013, Choghi has set up companies to acquire the luxury properties where Álvarez Puga and Gómez Mont live. For example, Choghi was the manager of LaGorce 64 LLC, through which the couple bought the mansion once owned by singer Cher in the 1990s; he is also listed as a member of the company 4985 Stables LLC, which was used to acquire a mansion in the Wellington estate in Palm Beach County.

The connection to Chogui transcends borders. In Mexico, he appears on the payment lists of the shell company Gupea Construcciones, which transferred 169,120 pesos ($9,250) to him. Furthermore, the Mexican Ministry of Finance identifies Chogui as the legal representative of the firm Acción y Evolución, S.A. de C.V., a company that reported millions in losses to the tax authorities to avoid paying taxes. Another link in the U.S. is Andrea Morán, Álvarez Puga’s sister-in-law. In 2022, the lawyer and his wife faced a civil lawsuit over the mortgage on a mansion in the exclusive Town & Ranch Estates neighborhood of Miami-Dade County. Gómez Mont acquired this property in 2021 through a shell company. In 2023, he transferred it to JBL Global Properties Corp., a company chaired by Andrea Morán, the wife of Alejandro Álvarez Puga.

In December 2017, a report in the society magazine Quién reported on Morán’s wedding to Álvarez Puga’s brother. Guests included Gómez Mont, her friend Galilea Montijo, and Montijo’s then-husband, Fernando Reina. Until that time, Gómez Mont and her husband were leading a double life: the more visible one was portrayed in celebrity and gossip magazines.

The TV host also had an altruistic side. She founded the Inés Gómez Mont Arena A.C. Foundation, which provided “emotional support” to single mothers. The NGO was co-chaired by Gómez Mont and Nora Peraza Chavarin, who appears on the payroll of Gupea Construcciones, where she received 2.6 million pesos ($142,000).

A significant number of those who benefited from the lawyer’s schemes are still unknown. The Álvarez Puga scandal is poised to shake up Mexico’s elite.

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