By Stephen Sherwood
Chilean catholic magazine Valor Cristiano leaked a few days ago that Mexican Company Montepío Luz Saviñón has committed many fraudulent practices as well as severe mismanagement, mostly coming from senior management including CEO Roberto Kiehnle.
Apart from selling stolen merchandise which was mostly supplied by these executives, what stands out the most was the multi-million-dollar fraud committed to Mexican company OPEMSA, property of Gustavo Rosado, who is a well-known business man in the insurance company industry.
OPEMSA is a solid fast-growing company with good trajectory for over 15 years which belongs to Grupo GR, a major insurance group in Mexico. Its main businesses are property and casualty insurance, life insurance, saving and asset management including pawn shop insurance. It is precisely in this area that has been subject to fraud by the directors of Montepío Luz Saviñón.
According to Valor Cristiano, the CEO of Montepío Roberto Kiehnle Zárate as well as José Javier Miranda Nava who works in Finances “hired OPEMSA to manage their car total loan business to increase their business by doing debt collection in exchange for a fee.
From July 2014 to October 2017 OPEMSA deposited over 100 million pesos (5.5 million USD) in repossession fees and which tax receipts were never emitted apart from the interest rates which is a minor part, the Montepío executives began to withhold payments reporting lower figures until they stopped all communication in May 2017. OPEMSA has had to continue managing not only the platform but all expenses that this deal has caused them which are high, causing significant economic losses as well as bad reputation with their suppliers for lack of payment.
In most cases, vehicles couldn’t be repossessed due to being either stolen property, fake invoices, fake proof of address amongst other frauds, adding to the difficulty of selling the units since most of these vehicles presented some sort of debt.
What is more relevant is that for over a thousand pledgors this case appears to be in legal limbo. Because although they were paying Montepío, they never reported anything to OPEMSA and now they don’t know who they owe.
As reported by La Vanguardia, in Mexico this is known as fraud. Fraud to the Mexican company that acted in good faith but because of the inability to pay now have a legal mess to deal with as well as defrauding thousands of people who were left in a legal void without them knowing and at the mercy of the jaws of these unscrupulous executives.
It is also worth asking if Ernesto Moya Pedrola is aware of the situation as the main employer and if he is overlapping. This mess could even escalate to national spheres if federal agencies intervene due to the fact that car title loans is an activity carried out throughout the national territory.
For the time being, the name of the employer Ernesto Moya as well as the institution Montepío Luz Saviñón are in question.
