Click here for the ChedrauiLeaks press release distributed in Mexico.
MEDIA CONTACT: Rigoberto Valdez: (213) 300-4345
Los Angeles, CA. May 31, 2017 – El Super is 86% owned by the billionaire Chedraui family’s Mexican retail giant, Grupo Chedraui. The Chedrauis are partners with an American company, Sherman Financial Group, in a short term high-interest lender in Mexico (Consubanco).
A longtime Sherman insider, David McGrath, gave $25,000 on October 7, 2016 to the Trump Victory committee, which reported McGrath as an “Investment Banker” working for Sherman. A trust fund established by McGrath is a shareholder of one of the 14 corporate entities that were minority owners of Sherman Financial Group as of 2015, ChedrauiLeaks found by examining public records.
Two Chedraui family members running El Super occupy key positions in the Sherman-Chedraui partnership, known as Consubanco. Ramón Chedraui Eguía is the Chairman of both Consubanco and El Super (formally named the Bodega Latina Corporation) and he sits on the board of El Super’s parent corporation Grupo Chedraui. Ramón’s father, Antonio Chedraui Obeso, sits on all three boards as well.
Sherman Financial Group owns nearly half (49.6%) of Consubanco. Members of the Chedraui Obeso and Chedraui Eguía families own 49.8% of Consubanco through their company Cubo Capital. Consubanco provides high-interest short-term loans and credit cards through a network of locations including credit card kiosks in Chedraui supermarkets in Mexico, generating $2.354 billion pesos in interest payments in 2016 alone. The annual interest rate on a Consubanco credit card could go as high as 177.8% according to the company’s filings with the Mexican government for the first quarter of 2017.
Sherman Financial Group is a network of companies that invests in consumers’ defaulted debts. Sherman Financial Group reportedly expected over US$2 billion in revenue in 2016. Sherman also owns a credit card bank that has 7 million customers and advertised annual interest rates as high as 24.65% on purchases in May. A Sherman subsidiary is the largest purchaser and servicer of distressed consumer debt in the United States, totaling $196 billion as of October 2016.
The Trump Victory Committee was created by Donald Trump together with the Republican Party to accept large contributions and coordinate support for Trump before the Presidential election. The Trump Victory Committee split the donation so that the maximum legally permissible amount ($2,700) went directly to the Trump campaign and the remainder ($22,300) went to the Republican National Committee.
El Super has twice already drawn attention due to information released by Chedrauileaks: The El Super Vice President of Supply Chain Management (Sal Marcianti) personally made donations four times to the Donald Trump campaign less than two months before the election. And the Grupo Chedraui director that resigned in October, Alejandro Ramírez Magaña, owns a $9.5 million apartment about six floors below Trump’s penthouse in Trump Tower New York.
Documents are available at: http://ChedrauiLeaks.org/Consubanco/?lang=en
About ChedrauiLeaks.org
ChedrauiLeaks.org is a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers, to investigate the connections between the Chedraui family and other Mexican elites and their links to business and property in the United States, the business and political activities of Mexican elites generally, and provide information about the struggle of El Super workers for a better life.