A Company is the owner of the water in Playa del Carmen and Quintana Roo in México since 1993. But the people are very fed up already.
Since 1993, at the age of salinism’s privatization, the business Aguakan from Jorge Eduardo Ballesteros Franco -sued in the USA in 2001 for insider trading- gives the services of water, drainage and sanitation to the north of Quintana Roo. The concession is until 2053. However, due to the irregularities of the granting and the hundreds of complaints to the Profeco for the improper charges, local authorities seek to annul it through a legal appeal and a citizen’s consultation.
Mexico City, January 30th - Without bidding in between to determine the best option and for only 1,055 million pesos, the business Desarrollos Hidráulicos de Cancún (Aguakan), a subsidiary of the construction company Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo (GMD), has an integral concession title until 2053 to grant the services of potable water, drainage and sanitation in the north of Quintana Roo at the tourist municipalities of Benito Juárez (Cancun), Isla Mujeres and Puerto Morelos since 1993 and from Solidaridad (Playa del Carmen) since 2015.
Local authorities have interposed a legal appeal to the state’s administrative court of justice, which is going in a period of expert test’s relief, and they organized a citizen’s consultation to be celebrated on June 6th to vote on the annulation of this privatization in times of the salinism.
The office of consumer’s defense from the Mexican Caribbean Zone has received 210 complaints against the service of this business from January 1st, 2019 to January 20th, 2021 (107 in 2019; 92 in 2020 and 11 on the year in course). The main reason for the complaints received is improper charges, followed by the refusal to deliver the service, in other words, the consumers manifests having paid the service and counting on it in a limited way, it was informed to this newspaper from the Procuraduría Federal del Consumidor (Profeco).
Of the 210 procedures started, 84 of them continue in the process and are waiting to be conciliated in favor of the consumer, so the amount of the forfeit could ascend to 4 million 877 thousand pesos. Gastón Borda, commercial and communication manager of Aguakan, exposed that the monthly average of complaints is 8.7 per month, which represents 0,00002 percent of the total of their 428 thousand clients and explained that on occasions they don’t notice the leaks in the water tanks, cisterns or bathrooms, which increases their fee.
Both the complaint and the citizen’s consultation were attributed by electoral and populist purposes ahead of the state elections of June. “To guarantee the supplies to the population and maintain an integral service, it is required a permanent investment. If it doesn’t count with a scheme of public-private participation like in other 4 municipalities, it is more probable that the state would have to generate a public debt, impacting in the population’s pockets”, said Borda.
Aguakan was formed in July 1990 and operates in the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV) since December 2014. In front of its investors, the company owned by Jorge Eduardo Ballesteros Franco justifies that since the decade of the nineties the “shortage” of public budget to invest in water systems gave place to new schemes to “solve the great backwardness”, especially in the tourist centers of the entity. In 1991, during the six-year term from Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–1994), the Comisión de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado (CAPA) of the state and the company realized the first project of co-investment in infrastructure, and on October 20th, 1993, the concession was granted, extended for 30 years in 2014 during the state government of Roberto Borge Angulo, detained for diversion of public resources.
In May 2014, during the government of Rafael Moreno Valle Rosas, in Puebla were privatized the services of water and drainage to the company Conseciones Integrales “Agua de Puebla”, which recognized 46 thousand cuts at the municipality of Puebla for debts from 2016 to July 2019. Though the Asamblea Social del Agua (ASA), a local collective of lawyers, calculates that is 100 thousand per year on average since the increases of the fees were 400 percent in the last lustrum.
The attorney Ricardo Sheffield assured in April 2019 that Aguakan is the “king of the complaints” interposed by the citizens of Quintana Roo because of improper charges, since it’s “billing air”. From a press conference in the entity, he exposed that “ first we will go through the way of the dialogue and if not, we will go to the courts” since the problem with the company lies “from its adhesion contracts” for the provision of the services, irregularity in which agrees the Mayor of Solidaridad, Laura Beristain Navarrete. Since 2018 the Municipal President showed to the administrative court of justice from the state Quintana Roo an appeal to annulate the concession for breaking the law, which is still in process.
“I made the payment in a supermarket and they gave me my receipt and everything, something that wasn’t reflected in the company of Aguakan”, Jesus said, a Cancun resident, to the Senator Marybel Villegas Canché, who collected more than 50 thousand signatures to call a citizen’s consultation about the concession in the four municipalities where the company operates. “From there passed 5 months, they come and cut off my water. I open my key at seven in the morning and its pure air, but it is marking you and marking you”.
The Mayor of Solidaridad Laura Beristain assured that the charge “is disproportionate” for providing the “deficient” potable water service to citizens and affects the ecosystem through the contamination of water and groundwater, due “to the precarious conditions in those that work in the wastewater treatment plants in the municipality, as well as in the potable water storage”.
However, Aguakan’s commercial and communication manager argued that the company has not violated any ordinance or law. “In each electoral process, speeches and voices arise that distort information. They point out the hardness of the water or speak of poor quality, when due to the characteristics of the soil of the Peninsula it is natural that the water has different properties from those of other states ”, he stated.
According to local journalist Pedro Canché –incarcerated from 2014 to 2015 for covering a block at the facilities of the Water Commission of the city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto–, Aguakan owner Jorge Ballesteros Franco has “a long history of bankrupt companies ”, But his personal finances never decrease. He is even on the Council of Kimberly Clark, of the magnate Claudio X. González.
The federal government, since the time of Carlos Salinas, “has rescued him time and again” and in addition to the water concession in the north of Quintana Roo, it granted him the construction of the Autopista del Sol and infrastructure in Acapulco, Guerrero, which was damaged by hurricane “Manuel”. And in the Ernesto Zedillo administration, in the midst of the 1994–95 crisis, the Ballesteros family was one of the most favored by the operations of Fobaproa through its Mexican Development Group, Caché has documented.
In the United States, the Securities Commission sued him in 2001 and 15 others for “extensive and highly lucrative” insider trading, resulting in more than $ 3.7 million in profits. Jorge Eduardo Ballesteros Franco and others, including his deceased brother José Luis, purchased thousands of shares — using foreign trusts under false names — in Nalco Chemical Company, prior to the public announcement on June 28, 1999 that the company would be purchased by the French firm Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux.
THE ENLARGEMENT UNTIL 2053
On November 10, 2014, the owners of the company by that time José Antonio Salazar Guevara and Paul Andrew Rangel Merkley requested the state government of Roberto Borge Angulo, as well as the municipal governments of Benito Juárez (since 2015 also Puerto Morelos), Isla Mujeres and Solidaridad, and the Potable Water and Sewerage Commission (CAPA) a single concession title for the municipalities, extend it to Solidaridad and an extension until December 31, 2053.
However, the government side for the Municipality of Solidaridad in its article 45 expressly prohibits the concession of public services such as water and sewerage to individuals. In addition, they also violated article 126 of the Potable Water and Sewerage Law of the State of Quintana Roo, since the call was not made by the Board of Directors of the Potable Water Commission with the bases or tender to opt for the best financial and quality option for the municipality.
“It was the conspiracy of Roberto Borge, former governor of Quintana Roo; Mauricio Góngora, former municipal president of Solidarity, both imprisoned for diversion of public resources; Paul Carrillo de Cáceres, former municipal president of Benito Juárez; and Agapito Magaña Salazar, former municipal president of Isla Mujeres who opened the door for Jorge Eduardo Ballesteros so he could extort northern Quintana Roo inhabitants with the Aguakan company” journalist Pedro Canché wrote in notes.
The Government Side for the Municipality of Solidaridad in its article 45 expressly prohibits the concession of public services such as water and sewerage to individuals. Photo: Aguakan.
On December 5, before the approval of the Council of Solidaridad, the former General Director of the Water Commission, Paula Guadalupe González Cetina, the Ministry of Finance of the state Government and the company signed a contract where they agreed to pay a consideration for the only occasion of 1,055 million pesos by Aguakan and that the term of the concession was extended from October 20, 1993 to December 31, 2053.
Until December 8, 2014, during the municipal presidency of José Mauricio Góngora Escalante, the town council of Solidaridad unanimously approved that this human right would be passed from the management of the Potable Water Commission to this company.
“It is noteworthy the various commitments to coverage goals, efficiencies, and investments in the water and drainage system that Desarrollos Hidráulicos de Cancún has done. They are higher than those currently provided therefore the mentioned concession will represent multiple benefits of quality and coverage for users ”, justified the Council in accordance with the minutes of the twelfth extraordinary session that December 2014.
The basis for the granting of this concession requests the company to satisfy the demand for potable water and drainage by 100 percent within a maximum period of five years (completed in 2019) and six years (completed in 2020), respectively. In addition, the concession title obliges the company to allocate at least 11.40 percent of its income to infrastructure investments. From 1994 to 2014, potable water coverage increased from 61 to 100 percent in the municipalities of Benito Juárez and Isla Mujeres, according to company data.
But in Solidaridad, Mayor Laura Beristain affirmed that the investment projections and the correct provision of the potable water and sewerage service in the municipality, indicated in the application for the granting of the concession in 2014, have not been fulfilled.
THE LAWSUIT IS “INFOUNDED”
The Mayor of Solidarias, Laura Esther Beristain Navarrete, who was Councilor at the time but was the only one to vote against the extension of the concession, presented to the Administrative Court of the State of Quintana Roo an appeal to annul the Aguakan concession in June 2018
“Desarrollos Hidráulicos de Cancún considers that the lawsuit is unfounded and that there are solid arguments to obtain a favorable resolution, therefore, together with its team of external lawyers, it will promote the corresponding legal resources” informed the company to its investors in the Mexican Stock Exchange
In September 2016, as a Congresswoman, she presented an exhortation to the town hall to reverse the concession since it violates the Law. She justified that article 115 of the Constitution states that the municipalities are the ones that must provide the potable water
and sewerage services; and Article 147 of the Constitution of Quinta Roo establishes that municipalities, only in accordance with the Law, can approve concessions to individuals.
“A clear violation of the Law is observed by the former Municipal President of Solidaridad, José Mauricio Góngora Escalante, and the Town Hall Council of Solidaridad City, who exceeding their powers granted individuals the concession of municipal public services, when it is expressly forbidden to do so”, she stated in her letter.
On the other hand, Senator Marybel Villegas Canché (who went from the PRD, to the PAN, to the PRI and finally to Morena) gathered the 50 thousand signatures needed to carry out on the day of the historic elections on June 6, a citizen consultation on the concession in the four municipalities where the company operates
“Aguakan has been respectful of the various mechanisms of citizen participation, in addition to maintaining a position of open dialogue with the public,” concluded the commercial and communication manager.
