The Mexican 'Uncle Rich' Tweets His Wealth While Others Protect Their Privacy

Mexico's Ricardo Salinas is a rare exception to a trend that sees billionaires concealing their wealth and whereabouts.

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As a retail and media magnate with a reputation for playing hardball with rivals, Salinas flaunts his wealth and mocks critics by posting images of his helicopter, plane, yacht, and ranch to his more than 1.2 million Twitter followers, sharing posts with them of his helicopter, plane, yacht, and ranch. The owner of the Mazatlan soccer team recently posted a video on his social media accounts offering the players of the team $300,000 if they won the tournament to split among themselves.  

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"We didn't win, but we had a great time," Salinas stated. “That's what money is for, to have a good time."

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Salinas, 67, is an avid golfer and a lover of cigars and cognac who is a strong believer in Bitcoin and retweets crypto supporters like Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, and Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy Inc. Aside from openly disagreeing with sports reporters from ESPN and referring to them as idiots, he also adopted the nickname "Tio Richi," or "Uncle Rich," and wrote an analysis of Scrooge McDuck for his blog. 

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A 12-billion-dollar businessman, Salinas inherited a family business and ventured into media through TV Azteca.

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It was later that he built Banco Azteca, a lender that focuses on low-income clients and handles tens of billions of dollars in remittances every year, mostly from the US, for lower-income clients. It goes without saying that he also offers loans and installment payment plans to his clients at his Elektra stores to help them finance everything from household appliances to clothes, computers, and furniture. He has recently started a business that assembles and sells cheap motorcycles, as well as selling high-speed internet through a fiber-optics company that he works with.

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Known for his sharp-elbowed negotiator skills, Salinas is well-known in the business world. Having no fear of lawsuits, he has taken on local tax authorities, business rivals, and bondholders with equal tenacity.

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A dispute has arisen between TV Azteca and creditors over $400 million in defaulted notes owed to TV Azteca. The US Securities and Exchange Commission brought a lawsuit against him and a member of the TV Azteca board in 2006, in which the two agreed to pay a combined amount of $8.5 million in order to settle the case without admitting any wrongdoing on their part. After the incident occurred, he decided to delist his companies from the US market as a result.

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The chairman of Grupo Elektra has amassed a fortune that makes him Mexican's third-wealthiest person, behind telecom tycoon Carlos Slim, 83, and mining tycoon German Larrea, 69.

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There is a marked difference between their media shyness and Salinas's. Slim's Twitter account has nearly 403,000 followers, but it has never posted anything. There are few public photographs of Larrea, who is a bidder for Citigroup Inc.'s local retail banking unit.

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An expert in the politics of billionaires, Carl Rhodes, dean of the University of Technology Sydney's business school, who is writing a book on billionaires' politics, explained how billionaires rarely flaunt their wealth — if anything, they keep the vast inequality they represent a secret as one way of evading public scrutiny. 

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The purpose of such displays is not entirely clear, but “one hypothesis is that it is meant to demonstrate that he earned it on merit, so he deserves it.”

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A spokesperson for Salinas said he is worth more than the index estimates, without revealing details, and is displaying his fortune because he wants to.

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“It's a well-earned fortune and an inspiration for those who strive for success and prosperity,” Pascoe said.

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Salinas posted a Twitter poll late Monday asking whether he should be more discreet about his wealth on social media after Trade Algo sent questions about the story. More than 80% of respondents said he should remain the same.

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Salinas is displaying his huge fortune in a developing country where 43.9% of Mexicans lived in poverty in 2020. It was estimated that 8.5% of the population lived in extreme poverty.

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Salinas has posted pictures of his recent activities on social media, such as poker games he played with friends, private concerts, a walking tour of his estate, a new plane he received from "Santa" and his helicopter waiting to take him to his flight to Uruguay.

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During his stay, he posted photos with fellow billionaire Alejandro Bulgheroni at the Bodega Garzon winery and had lunch with President Luis Lacalle Pou.

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Besides Twitter fans, Salinas also has 342,000 followers on Instagram, 582,000 on Facebook, and 63,600 subscribers on YouTube.

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He ripped former Mexican central banker and Bank of International Settlements head Agustin Carstens for saying that crypto had lost the battle against fiat currency in his posts against communists.

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Salinas responded with laughing emojis after one of his followers said he was their favorite "millionaire."

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“Billionaire, please,” he stated. “Don’t make me poorer with a stroke of the pen.”