Abandoned money: 10,000 million pesos!

The Chamber of Deputies approved the reform that allows the government to appropriate money from abandoned bank accounts to strengthen the police forces.

These are the “mostrencos” resources, that is, those that do not have an owner; those who have been without activity in the financial system for more than six years.

In a first calculation that has been released with the approval of the reform itself, there is talk of around 10 billion pesos.

It is a reform to article 61 of the Law of Credit Institutions so that all the resources and interest accumulated on the deposits and investments in the global account -with the exception of those dedicated to public charity-, prescribe in favor of public safety and are destined for politics and actions to combat crime for the Federation, the states and municipalities.

The opinion was endorsed in general, with 483 votes in favor, zero against and one abstention and, in particular, with 366 votes in favor, 102 against and zero abstentions. It remains for the Senate of the Republic to approve it.

The reform provides that the National Public Security System implements coordination mechanisms, as well as conventions and agreements, to carry out the transfer of resources, which will be distributed to the Federation (50%), states (30%) and municipalities. (twenty%).

The coordinator of the board of directors of the Chamber of Deputies, Ignacio Mier – promoter of the reform – clarified that he is not proposing to dispose of the resources of users of financial services with the possibility of being claimed.

Only those resources whose right to be claimed have prescribed; that having elapsed the six years established by law, they were not and cannot be claimed.

Consequently, constitutional guarantees will not be affected, according to the legislator.

The reform seeks to provide resources to the national guard. In other words, it has an apparently unobjectionable objective: to finance the fight against organized crime.

It is true, it is not a new measure. With smaller amounts, the abandoned money was sent to a global account and then to public assistance. Now, in amounts greater than 52 thousand pesos, for each account, the abandoned money will go to the security forces.

This is the provision by the government of private resources. It is, for practical purposes, a wealth that the government did not generate.

One of the biggest concerns regarding the management of public finances by the current government is precisely public spending. Practically all the resources that they inherited from the neoliberal governments in the different funds have run out. The same thing happened with the budget of the trusts.

It is worrying that they are now moving towards the confiscation of private resources. Hopefully, transparency mechanisms are foreseen in the management of these resources.

At the time

Mexico, among the 12 fiscal hells

Mexico ranks 11th among the 12 countries included in the Tax Hell Index, prepared by The 1841 Foundation.

In the first ten places, they are from first to tenth place: Belarus, Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, Ukraine, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Bosnia, Haiti and Honduras.

The Top-12 is made up of those countries that have fiscal greed, poor quality of institutions or a combination of both characteristics.

The first 12 “fiscal hells” were characterized as both low- and high-tax countries, but all of them “have low-quality governments, high corruption and discretion, poor economic management, and weak institutions.”

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