Electricians union leader owns properties worth US$1.82 million

Víctor Fuentes del Villar makes 20,628 pesos (US$1,230) a month as leader of the Electricians Union (SUTERM). However, he owns five properties with a combined value of 30.6 million pesos (US$1.82 million) in Mexico City and the State of Mexico.

From 2005, when Fuentes del Villar assumed leadership of the union, to 2009, when he bought two of the most expensive properties, he earned 990,000 pesos (US$59,044), which means he wouldn't have been able to afford the properties with his salary.

As secretary general of the SUTERM, Fuentes Del Villar administers an average annual budget of 63 billion pesos (US$3.75 billion) and represents 74,655 workers.

Don Victor, as the unionized workers of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) know him, started working for the union in July 1956, when he was 20, and assumed the leadership of the SUTERM in 2005 after the death of his uncle and hitherto lifelong leader Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine.

Four years later, in July 2009, he bought a 245-square-meter apartment for 3.12 million pesos (US$186,475) at Bosque Real residential complex, in Huixquilucan, State of Mexico. The property is now worth around 6 million pesos (US$357,798).

The residential complex has a lake, a waterfall, a couple of golf courses, gym, cinema and swimming pools, among other luxuries.

A month after buying the property in Huixquilucan his wife, Mrs. Ana Olivia Coello Eboli, bought a 173 square-meter apartment in the upscale commercial and residential center Reforma 222 in Mexico City for 7.83 million pesos (US$466,772). The property is currently valued at 10.3 million pesos (US$614,029).

Mrs. Coello stopped working when she married Fuentes del Villar, that also owns properties in Hipódromo Condesa, Viveros de la Loma and Electra neighborhoods worth 4.78 million pesos (US$285,065), 4.7 million pesos (US$280,244) and 4.9 million pesos (US$292,116) respectively.

The union leader drives an Infiniti Q70 worth 949,900 pesos (US$56,643). He also uses a 2013 and a 2015 Suburban, with a combined value of 1.53 million pesos (US$91,454).

Jesús Navarrete Castellanos, historical opponent of Fuentes del Villar and leader of the National Coordination of SUTERM Electricians, says that the wealth of Fuentes del Villar can only be explained by corruption in the administration of the union fees paid by workers, the resources provided by the government and the bribes paid by contractors that work for the Federal Electricity Commission.

EL UNIVERSAL unsuccessfully tried to interview Fuentes del Villar for this story.

* This story was written by EL UNIVERSAL within the framework of the Initiative for Investigative Journalism in the Americas promoted by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in partnership with Connectas.