Luis Enrique Cucalón, Cristóbal Salerno, and Cobranzas del Istmo, Ordered by the Courts to Pay $4.4 Million
The Court of Accounts condemned the former director of the General Directorate of Revenue (DGI), Luis Enrique Cucalón above left, the businessman Cristóbal Salerno above right and the company Cobranzas del Istmo to pay $4.4 million. Through a ruling made public on February 12, and signed by magistrates Álvaro Visuetti, Pablo Chen Vallarino and Rainier del Rosario Franco, the court declared Cucalón, Salerno and Cobranzas del Istmo financially liable for having harmed the State funds through an irregular and negligent handling of public economic resources, through the execution of a contract signed in August 2010 between the DGI, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Cobranzas del Istmo to manage the collection of delinquent taxes.
The company Cobranzas del Istmo, owned by Salerno, was contracted by the DGI as a debt collection manager for an amount of $29.5 million, but an audit by the Comptroller General of the Republic revealed that the company incurred serious irregularities in the collection of the delinquencies, including withheld collections that were not paid, others that were paid for smaller amounts and in which the company also received the corresponding commissions. It was also proven that Cobranzas del Istmo charged commissions that did not conform to the percentages agreed in the contract, received commission payments for unmanaged arrears, and that there was duplication in the cancellation of said commissions.
Salerno agreed to the return of a total of $20.6 million, but this amount was not enough to cover the entire financial loss caused by the irregular charges made by Cobranzas del Istmo. Then, through the seizure of a series of accounts linked to Cucalón, another $6.6 million was recovered, leaving a liquid amount of $2.2 million, to which interest was added, resulting in a final balance of $4.4 million. The court also ordered the application of precautionary measures on the assets of the defendants up to the amount of the imposed sanction.
Luis Cucalón Leaving the Courthouse
In September 2024, the First Liquidation Court of Criminal Cases sentenced Cucalón and Salerno to 100 months in prison for the crime of money laundering, after considering that they participated in a complex money laundering scheme, which not only involved the handling of illicit funds, but also included actions aimed at their insertion into the national financial market. This sentence is pending resolution of an appeal in the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, filed by the defense of Cucalón and Salerno.
Previously, in 2018, the same court declared Cucalón criminally responsible as the perpetrator of the crimes of embezzlement and corruption of public servants, imposing a sentence of 96 months in prison, and validated a 48-month sentence agreement for Salerno, which in turn was replaced by a fine, as part of the process followed for irregularities in the collection of delinquent taxes by the company Cobranzas del Istmo.
