Electric Theft: Pepsico and 1000 more companies, robbed Mexico’s CFE up to 30 billion, reveal former SME workers.
MEXICO. According to records collected by former workers of the state-own electric company CFE, just in 2018, one thousand foreign and national companies stole 1.7 billion dollars of illegal taking of electric power from its company.
The CFE has located where electricity theft is coming from. It shocked many to learn that the large 1000 foreign and domestic corporations in Mexico were the culprits for the bigget electric theft in that country’s history. The looting consumed 22 percent of the sales of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). As in comparison, 300,000 medium-sized companies only consume 37% of the electricity.
Among the corporations in the top 1000 list is PepsiCo, Pepsi Corporation headquartered in Mexico.
The losses are more than 30 billion pesos (1.7 billion dollars) from energy theft to CFE [official data of 2018]. These corporations will be inspected, but “it’s uncertain yet as to how much energy and money could be recovered from these one thousand companies that currently use almost fourth quater of electricity in the country", Said former worker Mario Benitez Chávez.
The head of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett Díaz, said in a February press conference that there has always been energy theft from large companies, hotels, and large industries that handle their own meters, and the non-payment of large quantities has been going on for years, saying that “an entire neighborhood does not steal what can be stolen from a single corporation."
Electrical engineer, Benitez added that "the national crusade against corruption, as a point of focus for the next six years of the new administration, should be supported by the company’s workers as well. Engineers and electricians should take up most of key tasks, but only those at the base and at the bottom, and not the union bosses who have been involved in corruption and who have benefited from robbery and plunder. "
Among the thousand corporations Pepsico (Pepsi Corporation), who already in 2012 was accused by the CFE before the then Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) for theft of electricity of four years.
Pepsico’s debts corresponded to two bottling plants, one in Oaxaca and the other in Claxcala de La Villa, in Mexico City, which are connected to a medium voltage service, and whose meters were reviewed in May 2012 by the CFE, and found altered electronic devices that marked a lower consumption rate than the real one.
"We are going to review and inspect those thousand companies. There is more to inspect on these corporations' directory offices, divisions, and its subsidiaries, so we can avoid this electric huachicoleo (theft). Controlling electric theft is not as easy as it was with the case of fuel theft at the oil company Pemex. Because at Pemex, they can cut the underground pipelines from the central monitoring office. Here at CFE, we can’t just flip the switch and cut off the electricity. It has to be done with servicing and auditing, and that is a task our workers would have to do. They have to work with live lines and understand meter readings and billing systems. Knowing all this, we need to figureout how the CFE can embark on this task and recover the $30 billion dollars a year from each of the 1000 corporations, is a daunting task" Reiterated Benitez Chavez.
Another recommendation, is the labor reinsertion of more than 16 thousand electric workers, is to cooperate in the classification of the archives of the now closed Center of Investigation and National Security (CISEN) that are now recently being declassified at the National General Archives. “We are going to catalog, digitize, transcribe 36 years of archives, and declassify 36 years of the dirty war. In the “Luz y Fuerza” union, we have very talented data specialists.” said Mario Benítez.
THE GOVERNMENT OF AMLO
One of the key elements that allowed the electricity theft scheme to run without any consequences, was thanks to the energy reform of 2014 which gradually dismantled the insecurity protectins and gave the path to corruption and bribing of CFE’s managing personal at the top. Many employees who did not agree to fall in line where fired, hence this seems to be a well-executed plan that permited corporations to collude with union leaders, and therefore employees where given the runaround when cases were reported.
"We believed and trusted the union leadership of the SME, but union leader Martín Esparza Flores was corrupted and colluded with these two governments of the far-right PRIAN," says the group of former workers Union, “we have lived, ever since they fired us without justification, in poor conditions and just trying to survive. We were being harassed and persecuted by the former government, and we’re blacklisted so we could not find a source of formal employment, while at the same time we were [physically] beaten and attacked by corrupt union leaders without scrutiny." said a former CFE worker.
When the new Democratic President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, took office in January of 2019, a comprehensive labor reformed bill was introduce in Congress, and within four months in office, AMLO’s new labor reform passed with all in favor, two absentees and zero against. The law now requires Union Democracy, meaning workers now have the ability to vote unanimously for their union leaders. This labor reform was a landmark and a Triumph for the new democratic President Manuel Andrés López Obrador (AMLO).
