The ghost of Gabriel Contreras at the IFT

A recent IFT decision that benefits AT&T stirred up an old ghost within that institute: the possibility that Gabriel Contreras Saldivarformer president of the IFT and today the main lawyer of the AT&T telephone company, maintains influence over officials of the regulator of the telecommunications from Mexico.

Last November, the IFT plenary session (Federal Institute of Telecommunications) avoided applying a specific sanction in the law against AT&T and opted for a generic penalty of much lesser amount. The penalty stipulated by law should be at least 432 million pesos, considering AT&T’s income, but it ended up at 4 million, 99% less than what was required. The decision was unanimous: the four full commissioners voted in favour. To the satisfaction of AT&T.

Gabriel Contreras was president of IFT until February 2020. Top-level officials operating today at the institute arrived at the invitation of Contreras. One of them, for example, is Fernanda Arciniega Rosales, promoted last May to head of the Compliance Unit, the office responsible for designing sanctions against subjects regulated by the IFT, such as AT&T.

In June 2022, the revolving doors put Contreras in the legal vice presidency of AT&Tthe second largest telecommunications company in Mexico and the largest globally by revenue volume.

Days after the signing of Contreras, the internal comptroller of the IFT warned that some officials of the institute could fall into a conflict of interest or present a “partial and subjective performance of their obligations due to personal affection or gratitude towards that person (Gabriel Contreras).”

“The good performance of public servants who have been appointed or are linked to the former commissioner becomes legally and ethically vulnerable,” wrote the head of the comptroller’s office, Gricelda Sanchez Carranzain an official letter addressed to the president commissioner of the IFT, Javier Juarez Mojica (expediente IFT/300/OIC/279/2022).

The sanction against AT&T It was because of his contempt for collaborating with the security and justice authorities in investigations into kidnappings, disappearances, and organized crime in which the lives and safety of people could be at risk.

On 9 occasions between 2017 and 2018 various authorities required AT&T personal data, communications metadata or the geographic location of the phone of some of its customers and on those 9 occasions the company delivered the information on time, according to details of the resolution to which I had access to.

Since the presidency of IFT, Gabriel Contreras learned in 2019 of the initiation of the investigation against AT&T. In 2022, the roles have reversed: Contreras now defends AT&T against the IFT.

The original sanction project contemplated a fine of 432 million pesos. Perhaps it was the payment of favors or “personal affection or gratitude” that the internal comptroller noticed, but November arrived and the plenary session approved a fine for one hundredth of what is stipulated in the law (article 298, subsection C, section V of the LFTR).

Coincidences or not, the full IFT dispensed discretionary justice in favor of AT&T with an alleged “pro-person, progressive and protectionist interpretation of rights” of the company. He acted as a judicial authority and, more papist than the Pope, ruled that the specific sanction that corresponded to AT&T it is excessive.

The IFT opened the option for any contempt to receive a generic sanction, without dissuasive force or reputation for those who fail to comply. The law exists, but there is no institute that wants to enforce it.

to the commissioners Javier Juarez Mojica, Ramiro Camacho Castillo, Arturo Robles Rovalo y Diaz Gonzalez bras they liked the sanction project designed by Fernanda Arciniega’s Compliance Unit and —perhaps without thinking about it or without wanting to or reading it— they approved it unanimously for the benefit of AT&T, creating an unfortunate precedent and stirring up the specter of Contreras’ influence in the IFT.