He black market of fuel has caused murders high impact linked people to Morena leaders and federal investigations in the United States. He was also the trigger for the war against huachicol that decreed Andrés Manuel López Obrador three weeks after assume the presidencywith which he hid the inability of the new team in Pemex of distribute gasolinecausing fuel shortages and rationing. The results of the fight against fuel theft seen, they were a disaster -today there is more theft and losses than in 2018 – and criminal activity alarmingly affects politicians close to the president. However, what has happened in this six-year term is much more serious and is happening before our eyes: the diesel smuggling.
Smuggling and theft They are two very different things. Everything we have heard in the six-year term is the huachicolas it is colloquially known fuel theftand where the organized crime. In the first quarter of this year, the number of clandestine taps had risen 2% more than in the same period in 2023, with 34 clandestine taps being detected daily. The increase of fuel theft and of the clandestine intakes that exist in 18 states, it breaks records every year. He smugglingmore than an organized crime crime, it is white collar.
For this to happen there has to be an import process, where Pemex and authorized private companies have to import diesel, which in order for it to be committed as a crime, a record would have to be filled out that does not indicate that it is a fossil fuel oil that pays tariffs, such as oil. In addition to Pemex, there are only six private companies, part of global consortia, that have valid permits to buy diesel abroad and introduce it into Mexico. At some point in the process, where at least one of the seven companies active in that trade is involved, the crime is committed.
Documents from the governments of Mexico and the United States prove that there is a fiscal huachicol based on the theft of fuel where those responsible for this crime that includes sentences of 20 to 30 years in prison and a fine of 20 thousand to 25 UMAs – which are equivalent today today at 39,606 pesos each – remain unpunished. It is a considerable damage to the Nation, because smuggling during the six-year term amounts to almost 12 billion liters of diesel, for which 71 billion pesos of special taxes, the so-called IEPS, were not collected.
The documents are public, from the Secretary of Energy and the United States Energy Information Administration. These are the data on diesel imports from Pemex and private companies, and US exports to Mexico, which show how they ran in parallel until 2018, reporting 288 thousand barrels of diesel imported from Pemex and private companies daily against 286 thousand barrels exported by the United States. United States, which were consistent increases during the six-year term of President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Starting in 2019, things changed radically. Imports recorded by the Ministry of Energy totaled 261 thousand barrels per day against 286 thousand barrels exported, a difference that widened even further in 2020 and 2021, the critical years of the coronavirus pandemic, when imports were 199 thousand and 197 thousand barrels per day, against 256 thousand and 286 thousand barrels per day exported by the United States. In the first three years of López Obrador’s government, diesel smuggling amounted to almost 70 million barrels a year, which meant a loss to IEPS of just over 57 billion pesos. In 2022 and 2023, smuggling was reduced to 15,000 and 21,000 barrels per day, which represented 13.2 million barrels of diverted diesel annually, causing losses to the treasury of almost 14 billion pesos.
There is no particular event that could explain this notable decrease in smuggling, because the levels of exports and imports between the two countries have remained stable since 2019, and the only thing in the field of fuel oils acquired outside the law was the murder in Monterrey of Sergio Carmona, who was called “the king of huachicol”, at the end of November 2021. Carmona, very close to the president of Morena, Mario Delgado, was the main financial operator of the party in power in Tamaulipas, and was associated with other businessmen who injected resources into several candidates in the country, including a frustrated one for the Presidency.
The smuggling was not an ant. In 2019 it was 25 thousand barrels per day, close to 10% of what was imported; In 2020 it reached 57 thousand barrels, almost 20% of United States exports; In 2021, the largest year in which the crime was committed, it totaled 88 thousand barrels, close to 40% of what was purchased in Mexico; with a drop in 2022 to 15 thousand, the lowest year of smuggling, 5% of imports, and 21 thousand in 2023, less than 10% of what entered this country.
It is not clear if some of the foreign companies with import permits were involved in the smuggling, but what is certain without having details of the crime is that the smuggling was carried out and protected from the highest levels of the government. The Ministry of Energy and Pemex have all the information and at some point, thinking as best as possible, they must have noticed the discrepancy between exports and imports. Customs, which today controls the Navy, must have at some point registered the falsifications in the consignments and realized that a crime was being committed.
Who were the officials who authorized the import of diesel? Who signed the import documents? Who didn’t check what was entering Mexico? Through which ports of entry did they arrive? None of this has been investigated and the clues are not difficult to follow, if there really was an intention to do so.
X: @rivapa
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