{"id":1845,"date":"2015-11-10T18:15:35","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T18:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/?p=1845&lang=en"},"modified":"2015-11-10T18:16:13","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T18:16:13","slug":"energuates-internal-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/economy\/energuates-internal-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Energuate’s internal crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Richard Brown and Patricia Mac\u00edas – EntreMundos correspondents. September, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

The electricity distributor Energuate (Doecsa-Deorsa) and its majority shareholder, Actis Capital, a British private equity firm that bought a 90% share in Deocsa-Deorsa in 2012, have a new and serious internal problem.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For years, Energuate has had to confront over 150,000 consumers \u201cin resistance\u201d who refuse to pay their bills. Energuate operates a monopoly in 20 of Guatemala 22 departments, generally rural areas where many families cannot afford even the food necessary to meet basic nutritional needs. Energuate and the government say that the consumers in resistance are stealing electricity through their illegal connections, which cause poor service and power outages, and that the community groups that encourage people to connect themselves illegally to the power grid and refuse to pay their bills are criminals who charge for these connections.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Communities in resistance maintain that endemic poor service predates the illegal connections, that bills have been going up and that they are too high to pay, and that Actis is a foreign corporation that abuses the poor, rural population of Guatemala. They also maintain that the corporation and the government use violence, murder, and arrests to discourage their movement.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But these aren\u2019t the only accusations made against Energuate; many of its own shareholders now accuse it of fraud and abuse. The Energuate Holdings Shareholders\u2019 Association (Asacen), a Guatemalan organization of minority shareholders, is readying a lawsuit against Energuate, alleging that the corporation cooks its books in order not to share dividends with minority shareholders, thereby increasing the profits it uses in part to bribe the officials it needs on its side. David Lopez, vice president of Asacen, told EntreMundos, \u201cThe question is: Where is the \u2018take?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The majority of the minority shareholders are former employees of INDE (the public National Institute of Energy, which currently generates about a third of Guatemala\u2019s electricity production and, before the sector was privatized in the 90s, controlled electricity distribution) and family members, who received stocks in electricity distributors after the sector was privatized in the 90s. Energuate has paid them virtually nothing through the three years since Actis\u2019 buyout, even though it has continued to sell the stocks to retired workers as a substitute for pension payments. Lopez said that there are retirees who have died waiting for their dividends.<\/p>\n

\"Members<\/a>
Members of the Energuate Holdings Shareholders’ Association (Asacen) speak with EntreMundos in Guatemala City. Speaking is Acasen president Jos\u00e9 Kelvin Coti. To his right, retired INDE workers. To his left, vice president David L\u00f3pez. Photo by Patricia Mac\u00edas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jose Kelvin Coti, president of Asacen, explained to EntreMundos that he had meetings with Jaime Tupper, Energuate\u2019s CEO, Maria Antoineta de Bonilla, president of Energuate\u2019s board of directors and former president of the Bank of Guatemala, and other managers, but they did not take Asacen\u2019s complaints seriously. \u201cThey thought we weren\u2019t going to do the press conference\u201d that occurred in April of 2015, when Asacen made its complaints public. After the press conference, Coti attended another meeting expecting Tupper, but only lawyers arrived.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Asacen seeks an audit of Energaute. And now they\u2019re in touch with minority shareholders of CAESS, a major Salvadoran distributor that operates principally in the north of El Salvador and supplies electricity to 400,000 consumers. Jaime Tupper also had a key position in this corporation, legal representative, when, according to Salvadoran sources in touch with Asacen, CAESS was defrauding shareholders and cooking its books. Coti explained to EntreMundos that Asacen is trying to prove that it\u2019s the same \u201cmafia of executives\u201d that is again defrauding their shareholders and the people of Central America.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We told Coti and Lopez that Actis Capital paints itself as a socially responsible organization, whose fundamental strategy, according to its website, \u201cis underpinned in by the observance of rigorous Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) guidelines.\u201d Lopez said, \u201cThat\u2019s a lie.\u201d And Coti said, \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to say something, another to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Energuate and Actis Capital are about to suffer a new publicity crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Richard Brown and Patricia Mac\u00edas – EntreMundos correspondents. September, 2015 The electricity distributor Energuate (Doecsa-Deorsa) and its majority shareholder, Actis Capital, a British private equity firm that bought a 90% share in Deocsa-Deorsa in 2012, have a new and serious internal problem.   For years, Energuate has had to confront over 150,000 consumers \u201cin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[411,425,410,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alternative-economy","category-community-action-en-2","category-economy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1845"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1856,"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions\/1856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}