▲ The lack of drinking water, electricity and drainage are the main reasons for the abandonment of properties.Photo Arturo Campos Cedillo
Jessica Xanthomila
La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, December 21, 2024, p. 6
In the PAN governments of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón was when the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit) was mainly dedicated to placing the greatest number of credits regardless of the quality of the homes, allowing developments in sites that lacked of basic services such as electricity, drainage or sufficient drinking water and even in areas that were lagoons.
The above led to the problem of abandoned homes, as confirmed and denounced at the time by Carlos Martínez Velázquez, former director of the institute.
In those 12 years, Infonavit was headed by Víctor Manuel Borrás Setién, who between 2006 and 2012 received fourteen-year salaries that in some cases reached 500 thousand pesos. In his last period of management he received a settlement of 3 million 396 thousand pesos, plus 8 million 12 thousand pesos for retirement benefits, according to information obtained through transparency.
During his administration, irregularities also occurred with the sale of overdue loans to private companies, which paid negligible amounts for them, affecting thousands of beneficiaries.
Regarding abandoned housing, Martínez Velázquez pointed out in 2020 that there were 650 thousand properties acquired with Infonavit credit in that condition, of which the largest number occurred in the decade from 2000 to 2010. He cited the case of El Barrial as an example. , in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where it was built in a part that was previously lagoons.
The Housing Commission of the Chamber of Deputies in 2022 stated that of the 650 thousand houses in a state of abandonment, 33 percent were centered in 10 municipalities of Chihuahua, Baja California, Jalisco, state of Mexico, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Guanajuato and Nuevo Lion.
Regarding the past due portfolio, this newspaper reported in 2009 the sale of around 110 thousand loans in this situation to the American capital companies Pendulum Associates and Corporate Society for the Resolution of Assets and Property (Scrap 2).
The then coordinator of the PRD deputies, Javier González Garza, said at that time that the president of the consortium dedicated to the purchase of credits and the resale of the portfolio was Enrique Colliard, in turn former director of corporate resources of the defunct Fobaproa, and that in 2006 it acquired 37 thousand Infonavit credits for the foreign firm Scrap 2, for which it only paid 1,783 million pesos, that is, 48,189 pesos per each home, on average.
According to González Garza’s data, such an operation was endorsed by the director of the home builder Homex at that time, David Leopoldo Sánchez-Tembleque Cayazzo, former deputy general director of planning and finance at Infonavit, a position for which he was proposed in 2002. by Borrás Setién, who met him when they both worked at BBVA-Bancomer.
Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar then maintained that another housing package was delivered to Campark, linked to Construcciones Practicas, owned by brothers Manuel and Jorge Alberto Bribiesca, children of Marta Sahagún.
