Carlos Cabal Peniche

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Carlos Cabal Peniche was a prominent Mexican banker in the 1980s and 1990s.

He was born in 1957 as the son of a small-businessman who owned a fresh chicken factory. Carlos worked with his father while still in university. However, Carlos Cabal was a very dynamic businessman and soon started to build the political relationships necessary to be successful in Mexican business during the reign of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. It was due to these relationships that Carlos Cabal became a close associate of President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado’s son Federico de la Madrid. The association started business while Carlos was in his early 30s. At that time, Carlos Cabal also started investing heavily in Tabasco’s banana plantations. By 1989, he had established himself in Villahermosa.

Carlos Cabal’s business empire grew at an immense speed as he invested in virtually any kind of business. His interests in fruit orchards and timber were soon expanded to include shrimp exports, wood flooring, marble, travel agencies, hotels, real estate, restaurants, supermarkets, shipping lines, baseball, and a newspaper ("El Sureste").

Carlos Cabal’s major boost came in 1991 when he was introduced to President Carlos Salinas. Salinas had already announced three privatizations of Mexican banks and personally urged the Tabasco business community to secure the state bank for them. Carlos Cabal organized a group of businessmen to buy Banco BCH. Later Carlos Cabal also bought Banca Cremi, and united both banks into one named "BANCO UNION". Carlos Cabal also took over the Miami-based fruit giant, Del Monte Fresh Produce, thereby giving him control of 15% of the world’s canned food production, and placing his business empire at an estimated net worth of $2 billion USD.

As Carlos Cabal’s business empire grew he became the personalization of the success of Carlos Salinas’s market liberalizations. However, it has also later come to light that Carlos Cabal’s success, like that of Carlos Salinas’s policies, also had some rather questionable dealings. "La Jornada", a left-leaning newspaper in Mexico City, denounced that Carlos Cabal was a close affiliate of Colombia’s Cali Cartel.

Carlos Cabal knew the importance of political contacts as part of doing business. Therefore, he devoted himself to nurturing such networks. As mentioned above, he met President Carlos Salinas and became a close affiliate of Salinas’s brother, Raúl Salinas, Transport Minister Emilio Gamboa Patrón and Agriculture Minister Carlos Hank González, as well as Federico de la Madrid.

The downfall of Carlos Cabal began with the murder of his close political ally, PRI’s presidential candidate for the 1994 elections, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, who was replaced with Ernesto Zedillo, who eventually became president. Many of Zedillo’s cronies strongly disliked Carlos Cabal, which can explain why the National Banking Commission moved in on his banking empire in the summer of 1994. The National Banking Commission found some ‘irregularities’ as Carlos Cabal had issued loans to himself worth more than $700 million USD. The money, which he was unable to account for, was part of a larger money-laundering business run through his banks. These large missing amounts caused Banco Unión to go into receivership. Later it was also found by the Canadian independent auditor Michael Mackey that significant amounts of Raúl Salinas’s money transfers to Citibank had been pre-laundered and moved through Carlos Cabal’s banks.

The Mexican Government charged Cabal Peniche with 22 criminal charges. However, he hired a top-notch law team that has kept him out of jail. Many of the original charges have been dropped, some are still pending.

See also

*political scandals
*Political corruption
*Money laundering
*Partido Revolucionario Institucional
*History of Mexico