The Court will review an appeal against linkage to the process of the owner of Oceanography

Edward Murillo

Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, May 4, 2022, p. 13

The owner of the Oceanography company, Amado Omar Yáñez Osuna, managed to get the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) to review the protection that he promoted against his involvement in a trial for the crime of tax fraud, for about 150 million pesos. The case was assigned in turn to Minister Norma Lucía Piña Hernández.

The matter reached the highest court as the request to exercise the power of attraction 160/2022, through the sixth collegiate court in criminal matters of the first circuit.

The SCJN was asked to determine the general guidelines for the exercise of evidence assessment in the criminal process instructed for the crime of comparable tax fraud, when banking information of a third person, different from the accused, is used, exhibited by the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) to support his complaint for a crime of equalized tax fraud.

Since 2020, the Federal Tax Attorney’s Office announced that Yáñez Osuna had filed income statements for only 68 million pesos, when in reality his income had amounted to 395 million.

The businessman argued that this money was actually loans that Oceanography had given him, in addition to salary payments from another company.

The SHCP reviewed the bank movements of both firms, to verify that the records in Yáñez Osuna’s accounts corresponded to income that he had to report and pay taxes on them.

Oceanography was one of the preferred companies to receive contracts from Pemex during the governments of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, when it added more than 50 thousand 981 million pesos in income.

Despite this, he incurred in a fraud against Banamex, with which he contracted loans for 585 million dollars, for which he left contracts with Pemex as collateral. These illegal operations led the authorities to intervene in the company and declare it bankrupt.

Yáñez Osuna was arrested and linked to a trial for tax fraud in December 2020.