This power cannot be possessed by any lawyer. To practice it you need to be a person of integrity and probity, a legal professional. It is so important that the endorsement is granted by the highest authority of each state, the governor. It is called public faith and grants the certainty that what a notary authorizes is authentic, is true.
But not all appointees behave like this. Some notaries in Mexico have used their power to legalize the creation of companies that simulate tax operations, evade taxes, launder money and divert public resources.
At least 562 notaries in the country have attested to the creation of 1,171 signatures that have defrauded the public treasury and which are known as ghost companies, front companies, billing companies or by their legal name, EFOS, which means Companies that Invoice Simulated Operations.
This report is the result of an analysis and evaluation of the EFOS detected by the Tax Administration Service (SAT) between January 2020 and March 2024.
Among the notaries listed are former Government Secretaries, former mayors, former local and federal deputies, electoral representatives of political parties and leaders of professional associations.
Dozens of notaries repeat patterns in the legalization processes of billing companies: they formalize multiple companies on the same day, They validate the same people as shareholders of different companies and assign them very broad corporate objectives., with which companies can carry out more than 100 different activities, many of them unrelated to each other. All-inclusive companies.
The entities where the most front companies have been created are Jalisco (189), Mexico City (159), Nuevo León (112), Oaxaca (101) and the State of Mexico (83). 54% of the EFOS are concentrated in them, while the remaining 46% is distributed among 26 entities.
Baja California Sur was the only state where EFOS were not found in the period analyzed; However, it was found that they do exist in previous years.
Among the half a thousand notaries who legalized companies that were classified as invoicers, there are notaries who have been denounced, their notary office, also called fiat or patent, has been taken away, and they have even been criminally prosecuted.
In Oaxaca, notaries Alejandro José Vidaña Luna, Omar Abacuc Sánchez Heras and Jorge Zárate Ramírez have been accused of participating in a Dispossession Cartel, a structure that simulates legal acts and modifies deeds to appropriate properties with high capital gains. In 2023, Zárate Ramírez was linked to proceedings for unlawful exercise of public office in relation to the same case.
In Jalisco, Álvaro Guzmán Merino accumulated more than 52 sanctions, one of them for illegally deeding a part of Lake Chapala, a federal zone. The procedure was repealed, but the notary defends that the documents he endorsed did not specify that it was a federal zone.
In Sinaloa, José Antonio Núñez Bedoya was bulletined by the United States Department of the Treasury for formalizing companies allegedly used by Ismael El Mayo Zambada to launder money. He denied it at a press conference.
In Guanajuato, Alejandro Durán Llamas lost his notary office due to allegations of irregularities; He is also accused of dispossessing 180 hectares from ejidatarios through deception.
According to a 2019 SAT report, billing companies would have evaded taxes of around 354,512 million pesos between 2014 and 2019 alone. An amount that represented 1.4% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
Oaxaca, invoices at the service of the State
The state of Oaxaca is, perhaps, the place that best shows how shell companies operate and the participation of notaries. Here, a group of 20 notaries legalized 101 companies in just five years, between 2013 and 2018. Shortly after starting, several of them obtained public contracts with the government of the state of Oaxaca and city councils of the same entity. Most of the services were concentrated between 2016 and 2021, during the administration of former governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa.
According to the public contracts that could be traced in the transparency systems, these companies expanded the drinking water system, repaired damaged roads, built housing in highly marginalized areas, installed roofs in kindergartens and primary schools, rehabilitated health centers in rural communities, among others.
They received resources from the State Water Commission, the Housing Commission and the Oaxaca Infrastructure Secretariat.
The structure was not limited to their state: they took their invoices to other entities, such as Jalisco, Nayarit, Chihuahua and Zacatecas, where they provided official advertising and the organization of artistic events. They also issued tax receipts to verify the food and transportation expenses of government officials from Baja California Sur, Tabasco, Guerrero and Michoacán.
In a search in public databases, shareholders identified by their RFC were found, who appear in lists of beneficiaries of social programs of free milk, incentive programs for corn and bean producers, financing of 5 thousand pesos for microentrepreneurs and even classes for learn to read and write at the National Institute for Adult Education.
But the activities of these companies were short-lived, the majority were detected by the SAT between 2020 and 2021 and identified for not having assets or personnel, lacking infrastructure and not having the material capacity to provide the services they offer.
In a tour carried out in the Valles de Oaxaca region, the homes of 13 companies notarized by the notaries Omar Abacuc Sánchez Heras, Octavio Eduardo Manzano Trovamala Huerta and Mariana Martínez Gracida Orduña were visited. Empty commercial premises available for rent, uninhabited houses and even a vacant lot were found.
All notaries mentioned in this work were sought by telephone and email. Until the closing of this edition, only Guzmán Merino responded and denied all responsibility for the use given to the companies.
Corruption and fraud risks
To detect the level of risk that a notary runs when formalizing companies that at the same time become billing companies, this journalistic team developed a risk traffic light that works with the list of definitive EFOS of the SAT, created in the last two six-year periods (2012-2024 ).
The tool measures three criteria: the notary’s recidivism when formalizing companies that are subsequently detected as EFOS; the timing in which companies are formed, that is, whether multiple companies are formalized on the same day or in consecutive days and months, as well as the relationship of shareholders in various companies.
The methodology was consulted with three anti-corruption specialists who analyzed and issued recommendations to define the risk criteria and scores for each category.
The qualification places the notary at a low risk if he obtains three to eight points; medium risk if he adds from nine to 23 and high risk when his index is greater than 23, out of a possible maximum of 63 points.
Of the 562 notaries, 34 were in the highest risk level, half of them have their notaries in Jalisco and Oaxaca. These notaries validated between five and 17 front companies each, which represents a third of the total.
Eduardo García Corpus, head of Notary Office 115 of Oaxaca, obtained the highest risk score among the 562 notaries. In just three years, between 2013 and 2016, he formalized 17 billing companies.
García Corpus faced a criminal investigation in 2017 for certifying false facts and use of apocryphal documents. In 2018, his notarial books were disqualified for installing representative offices of his notary in different regions of Oaxaca. He currently remains in office.
Just over 50% of the billing companies analyzed were created in 2013, 2014 and 2015, however, it stands out that the detection of EFOS by the SAT decreased drastically starting in 2022. The SAT detected 537 in 2020; 532, in 2021; 70, in 2022 and 24 in 2023. In the first quarter of 2024, only eight companies entered the list.
Legal loopholes and lack of regulation
Vania Pérez Morales, a member of the National Anti-Corruption System and a doctor in Political Science, assures that the recurrence of irregular patterns when formalizing companies leads to the conclusion that notaries are not isolated characters or unrelated to networks of corruption and tax fraud.
“It is a fundamental piece in this corruption scheme, because it is the first place where a person turns to create a company. When we can see that it was not only a ghost company, but several on the same day, then the notary does knew that an act was being committed that could lead to illegal acts or corruption,” warns Pérez Morales.
Issa Luna Pla, coordinator of the UNAM Corruption and Impunity Observatory, questions the lack of a legal framework that monitors, regulates and sanctions the participation of the notary public in corruption structures, and emphasizes the need to provide the notary with tools that allow, for example, to verify the identity of people who come to him to create companies.
“There is a lack in the regulatory framework of notaries in Mexico and especially in the supervision of the activity of notaries. Notaries do not have supervision or rules or standards to prevent the formation of this type of front companies,” he explains. .
Minimum and revocable sanctions
Despite the repeated cases of corruption committed by some notaries, the sanctions or cancellations of the notarial license for violating the notarial law are minimal, and most are revoked before the courts.
Between 2020 and 2024, only 79 sanctions were applied and 40 public notaries were disqualified for lack of probity in 26 entities in the country.
In Campeche, Chiapas, Hidalgo, Morelos and Puebla they denied having information about the corrections to notaries and Chihuahua referred to the supposed “professional secret” to reserve the figures. In Mexico City, Colima, Durango, Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, Oaxaca, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas, zero sanctions and no revocation were reported.
Mexico City, the country’s capital, is the second entity with the highest number of ghost companies, but in the period analyzed no notary public was sanctioned. The figures were obtained through requests for information from the 32 entities in the country.
However, disqualifying a notary does not guarantee that he or she will stop practicing. In Sinaloa, Manuel Lazcano Meza’s fiat has been revoked three times in a period of 15 years. The last time, in November 2023, he was disqualified for registering purchase and sale contracts between people who had been dead for several years.
Of the 40 notaries disqualified between 2020 and 2024, there are 16 cases in which the notary managed to annul the sanction or maintains it being contested. In eight cases from Baja California, Guanajuato and Michoacán they recovered their notary offices through rulings from the State Courts of Administrative Justice that resolved in their favor.
In cases where the disqualification remains firm it is because there are convictions of deprivation of liberty. For example, the former attorney general of Nayarit, Édgar Veytia Cambero, whose notary license was removed on April 28, 2021, stands out.
The state authority accused him of “having seriously affected the sense of probity and the notarial function, by being sentenced with a custodial sentence.” However, Veytia Cambero was sentenced in the United States for his ties to organized crime, not for his notarial function.
“It is not the responsibility of the notary”
Guadalupe Díaz Carranza, president of the National College of Mexican Notaries, rejects that the notary has responsibility for the illicit use given to a company after its creation.
“What they do with that company once it has been established is no longer the responsibility of the notary. We cannot know in the future what they are going to do with that company. We cannot refuse to provide the services. We are not investigation agents, nor We are police,” he emphasizes.
Regarding the cases in which the notary repeats the formalization of dozens of EFOS linked to each otherDíaz Carranza urges that the authorities be the ones to investigate and punish.
The leader also accuses that the responsibility for the proliferation of EFOS is shared with the SAT or the Ministry of Economy, bodies that register the company and generate an RFC.
“If they are repeated practices and there are some suspicious situations, then let the same authorities investigate the notary who is not acting with probity,” he points out.
To protect the notary from getting involved in this type of structures, Díaz Carranza suggests that the tax authority allow them to know who the people are behind the companies listed in 69-B of the Federal Tax Code.
“For us it would be good to detect people, both physical and moral, who are in that situation. If we had access, then now we could refuse to provide the service,” he emphasizes.
Few sanctions
Only in 26 entities was the notary punished, between 2020 and 2024.
79 SANCTIONS of fines or temporary suspension were imposed on the notaries.
40 Notaries were disqualified, but 16 revoked the sanction or are in litigation.
#notaries #attest #ghost #companies
2024-05-28 07:32:56