Tycoon Salinas Scorns Twitter Suspension, Court Tax Loss
Twitter Says It Blocked Account of Mexican Billionaire Salinas
(Bloomberg) -- Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas rebuked Twitter Inc. over its move to block him for abusive behavior and vowed not to give up after Mexico’s top court dismissed a plea for relief from a $127 million tax claim against his flagship retailer.
Salinas, the chairman of an appliance retailer and bank as well as the country’s No. 2 TV network, appeared in a video posted on the Twitter account of his cable news station following his second bout of Covid, which he called a “bad cold.”
“Here we are, back after some forced vacation from Covid,” Salinas, 66, said from one of his offices.
On Wednesday, Twitter said Salinas’s account was blocked for violating the company’s abusive behavior policy, without saying what specifically sparked the action. Some recent tweets by Salinas have been deleted. In the deleted posts, he used offensive terms to mock a handful of Mexican media personalities that have been critical of him and called on his followers to make memes to ridicule them.
In his video, Salinas said that he had been responding to critics in their same terms on Twitter, but had been blocked. He accused them of “running to Mama Twitter.”
“I’m sure we’ll fix it and if not, we have other channels,” he said. He added that “freedom of expression shouldn’t have any limits.”
In an image posted earlier by Salinas on Instagram that has since been deleted, a message from Twitter is seen saying that users can’t “participate in harassment directed at a person or incite others to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone suffers physical harm.”
Salinas, 66, also referred to the Mexican Supreme Court’s dismissal on Wednesday of an injunction filed by his retail and banking company, Grupo Elektra, to block a 2.6 billion-peso tax claim by the government. His holding company, Grupo Salinas, said in a statement that the company would turn to corresponding international bodies to defend its rights.
“They just gave us a good beating over there in the Supreme Court,” Salinas said. “We have a problem there and we have to solve it. But here, we never give up.”
Mexico’s tax chief told Bloomberg last year that the case before the court, which was over income tax payments from 2006, would likely impact the outcome of a series of cases involving a total of around $2 billion in claims
Salinas is considered a potential buyer of Citigroup Inc.’s retail-banking operation in Mexico. He said he’s asked his team to look into acquiring the business, known as Citibanamex, while President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador named him as a possible buyer that would help keep the business “Mexicanized.”
Salinas’s holdings are worth $13.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He’s the chairman of Banco Azteca, Grupo Elektra’s bank, as well as TV Azteca.
Elektra shares fell 4.2% on Thursday at 11:57 a.m. in Mexico City trading, touching the lowest point in more than a year. The stock has been volatile since it has been named as a potential buyer for Citibanamex. TV Azteca shares were flat.
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