Interjet investor leaves, tension with Mexican gov’t deepens

Former banker Carlos Cabal Peniche has withdrawn from Interjet (4O, Toluca), together with a USD150 million investment promised in July 2020, sources at the indebted airline told the newspaper El Financiero and the Spanish international news agency EFE on November 10. The departure “will not affect” the company’s capitalisation projects and planned restructuring, the carrier said in a statement. “Alejandro del Valle, Miguel Alemán Magnani, and Miguel Alemán Velasco will continue as partners in the airline, safeguarding the interests of the company and its employees, meeting their commitments with the authorities and their creditors, and improving the quality of their service in favour of passengers,” the statement added. Cabal Peniche also released a statement via his company Grupo Cabal that it was withdrawing its investment, without specifying the sum. “We want this exit to help drive the company to develop new strategies that allow it to comply with its obligations to its workers and creditors. Finally, we reiterate our commitment to seeking investment in Mexico and the creation of sources of employment for Mexican families,” the Grupo Cabal statement elaborated. Alejandro del Valle, executive president at Interjet, said last week that he had acquired 90% of the airline’s shares together with Peniche. The businessmen used an entity called HBC International to notify the Mexican competition watchdog (Comisión Federal de Competencia Económica – COFECE) of a “concentration, merger, or association” with ABC Aerolíneas, the parent of Interjet, but expressed no further details. HBC International, which del Valle chairs, was created in the city of Naucalpan de Juárez in 2014 and its shares are held by other members of the del Valle family, El Financiero found. Cabal Peniche’s planned investment had caused some controversy because in the past he had been accused of allegedly benefitting from the rescue of the Mexican government’s Banking Fund for the Protection of Savings (Fondo Bancario de Protección al Ahorro – FOBAPROA) in the 1990s and was imprisoned for three years in Australia from 1998, EFE reported. Hours before his departure was revealed, the head of the Mexican tax authority (Servicio de Administración Tributaria – SAT), Raquel Buenrostro, at a press conference denounced Interjet for having held debts since 2013 for withholding Value Added Tax (VAT) and income tax. “The assets they have are not enough to cover their debts, so they need a capitalisation. We have been very patient and very cautious because we are empathic with all workers,” she said.