Opacity and discretion, the risks with the Infonavit reform

“It is a very important watershed in how things turn out in audits, planning, risk reviews because everything is in the hands of the government,” he added.

“What this reform does is remove all the locks so that they can freely manage the institute’s resources. You limit the powers it had to be a tripartite body. With this, they take power away from the representatives of workers and businessmen because in all the Infonavit committees the government retains the majority,” said Fernando Soto-Hay, founder and general director of Tu Hipoteca Fácil.

The changes

Among the changes in the way the institute operates is that the general director will be appointed by the president of the Republic. Currently, the General Assembly needs to endorse the proposal of the head of the Executive.

The reform gives the general director the right to vote in resolutions that are not approved unanimously by the Board of Directors or by the Infonavit Surveillance Commission.

The General Assembly is reduced to 30 members, with 10 representatives from each sector: workers, employers and the government.

The General Council will have 12 members and not 15, four from each sector.

The Surveillance Commission will have nine members; five from the government, two representatives from the recorders and two more from the employers.
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The Audit and Transparency Committees will have five members each. In both cases three members will be from the federal government, one from the employers and one from the workers.

“It is worrying because, where in the world has it been heard that the general director is above the board of directors and above the assembly? This is what they approved,” warned Fernando Soto-Hay.

“Infonavit was born as an egalitarian and equal tripartism. It is a unilateral form of control and direction, it is absolute control of the institute without any collegiate body being able to say ‘no’. Always in a vote, the votes (of the government) are going to be overwhelming and it is not going to be of any use,” Moreno lamented.

When asked if there was dialogue with the government prior to the approval of the reform, Alberto Moreno responded that there was a rapprochement regarding Infonavit Constructor, but “there was never a dialogue in relation to governance and statutory changes to direct Infonavit.” he referred.

It is important to emphasize that the money in Infonavit is not from the government, but from the 22.5 million formal workers who have a housing subaccount. Besides,

Until June 2024, there were 77.7 million housing subaccounts managed by Infonavit, according to data from Banco de México, Conavi and the institute.

“All the spaces of corruption that were removed may return because there is no audit and the review bodies will only serve as decoration,” lamented the Canadevi leader.

“What has to be done? Maintain consensus with the three factors of Infonavit’s governance, respect it, execute impeccably, truly combat corruption and not see the institute as the loot of the general director in office, see it as a mechanism for generating wealth for workers,” said Soto-Hay, who participated in the creation of the Shared Responsibility program.