Mexico: Did Big Tech Dig Undermine Calderón’s Tax Man?

Miguel Badillo is a Mexican investigative journalist and author of “ISOSA: Fraud on the Nation”

Oficio de Papel (Mexico): Miguel Badillo analyzes the resignation of Mexico’s top tax collector, wondering whether or not it has to do with the ISOSA case and the failed enterprise integration Big Dig that Oracle was hired to do for the Mexican Hacienda (Treasury).

On which see also:

• Badillo: “Oracle’s Mexican Tax Big Dig Sinks Deeper?”
• Mexico: Oracle is Ambiguous in Wolfowitz-Funded Tax-Tech Big Dig!
• Mexican Tax Man: Bad Business Logic Behind Miscounted Beans
• Mexico: ISOSA Probed by Mexican Congress
• Badillo: Oracle-Powered Mexican Tax Machine Bogs Down
• Badillo: Peoplesoft and the Iron Auditor

I note it because I am in the habit of noting stories about tech audits of Big Digs. I have actually worked on a few. It is an interesting, though nerdy, subject.

Mexico-Microsoft’s Enciclomedia “revolution in e-ducation” and the Hildebrando117 affair are other “make a run for the border” cases I have been following:

• Mexico: What the Education Committee Resolved to Say About the Enciclomedia Program
• Did Harvard Really Declare the Enciclomedia Program Useless?
• Mexico: “Enciclomedia Audit Awards No Plaudits”
• Mexico: “Enciclomedia Runs No Risk of Being Discontinued”
• Mexico: Hildebrando117 Journo Summarily Ratfinked For Refusal to Cede Editorial Independence
• Hildebrando117 Reloaded: Remembering the Aristegui Demonstration
• “PAN’s Dirty Hands”: More Hildebrando Data Brokerage-Jokerage?

June 16, 2008
Translation C. Brayton
[excerpt]

Oracle: a lucrative deal

It has not all been crystaline transparency at the Mexican federal tax authority (SAT) during the administration of the man who is principally responsible for squeezing taxpayers for what they owe, because there are many taxpayers, principally big taxpayers, who still do not pay what they owe. Suspicions have emerged during his five years at the helm of SAT, according to critics of this federal bureaucrat who shies away from the press, that provided the motive for his firing.

Among the cases that raise doubts about Zubiría Maqueo was the audit commissioned by the SAT from KPMG, and paid for by the “private” firm ISOSA (a corrupt enterprise created on the orders of Fox Treasury secretary Francisco Gil Díaz) – in which it was revealed that the Integrated Solution Platform, developed by Oracle, does not work, despite which the SAT signed contracts on the systems worth in excess of 50 million pesos.