In mid-March, Mexican authorities seized the ship Challenge Procyon after it had arrived at the Gulf port of Tampico from the United States. The cargo included nearly 63,000 barrels, or 10 million liters, of diesel fuel that had been misclassified on the ship’s bill of lading as a tax-exempt fuel additive. Since then, Mexican authorities and investigative journalists have unraveled a corruption scheme that has implicated the highest levels of Mexico’s military and government.
Building on that initial case, journalists have identified port and customs records indicating at least 69 similar illegal shipments since mid-2023, totaling hundreds of millions of liters of fuel and roughly $150 million in profits. As the Financial Times explained, the schemes began at the U.S. ports of exit, where exporters correctly identified the shipments as fuel on their bills of lading. Upon arriving in Mexico, however, Mexican customs agents and naval officers running the ports of entry would reclassify the shipments as various forms of lubricants and other petroleum products that can be imported without being taxed. Authorities have learned that many of those civilian and military officials had taken bribes to alter the documentation, change various test results and look the other way as the fuel was offloaded by local businesses.
The scandal has become known as Huachicol Fiscal. Huachicol is a term referring to various forms of fuel theft in Mexico. The huachicoleros—those engaged in the practice—were once small gangs or sometimes just ordinary citizens who would steal fuel from Pemex, the national oil company, and then sell it on the black market. A popular mythology even arose to portray them as almost Robin Hood-like figures who were providing cheaper gasoline for the benefit of their communities. Even today in Mexico, you can find people selling one- or two-liter soda bottles filled with stolen or illicitly refined gasoline or diesel on the side of some highways.