Mexican Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego Accuses AMLO and Morena of Forming a Criminal Cartel

Mexico City, Mexico — Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego has launched a scathing attack against former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Morena party, accusing them of forming a “criminal cartel” that uses “violence and fraud” to maintain power.

The accusations come just one week after Salinas Pliego’s companies agreed to pay more than 32 billion pesos to Mexico’s tax authority, the SAT. In a lengthy social media post, the magnate warned that the political group created by López Obrador “will not leave peacefully.”

“There is still time to move the country forward, but we all know that the ‘Tabasco Cartel’ will not leave peacefully and will cling to power with violence and fraud,” Salinas Pliego wrote in his characteristically provocative tone. He added: “Let’s not forget what they did to Carlos Manzo for daring to challenge them.”

From his active X account, which he uses to promote his political project, Salinas Pliego published an extensive message asserting that López Obrador “allied with drug cartels across the country” to reach power in 2018 after two electoral defeats.

The president of Grupo Salinas claimed that criminal organizations “financed his movement and, during the elections, criminals acted as his armed and violent arm.” He said that in return, the former president implemented his “hugs, not bullets” policy, which he equated to a “narco peace.”

Salinas Pliego, who was a close ally of López Obrador before his 2018 campaign and during the first five years of his presidency, emphasized that the former president ordered the release of Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, during the so-called “Culiacanazo” of October 17, 2019. He called this a “betrayal of the homeland” and noted that the then-president made eight visits to Badiraguato, birthplace of some of the most powerful leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.

“That’s why he visited Badiraguato eight times, that’s why he eliminated highway security and replaced it with cardboard patrols, that’s why governorships and mayoralties are held hostage by criminals,” Salinas Pliego said.

Beyond his personal campaign against the federal government and Morena over the multibillion-dollar tax litigation that his companies ultimately lost, the tone and content of Salinas Pliego’s message echo the strategy of an opposition sector seeking to impose the narrative that Mexico is becoming a “narco-dictatorship” — with some even adding “communist” — as a way to attract the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene in the country.

Just last February 5, a group of PAN and PRI politicians, along with more radical opposition voices like television producer Carlos Alazraki or Juan Iván Peña Neder, founder of México Republicano — an organization that aims to become an antenna for Donald Trump’s movement in Mexico — traveled to Washington for a Conservative Political Action Conference summit dedicated specifically to “narco-terrorism,” where they spread the idea that the country is controlled by criminal groups.

It’s worth noting that Salinas Pliego was once an ally of López Obrador and did business with his government. The criticism began when that agreement ended.