Between 2016 and 2023, 12 real estate groups who, directly or indirectly, requested construction licenses, became some of the main clients of Cocinas Integrales Europeas, company in which they invested at least 6.2 million dollars.
State of Mexico (apro).- Since 2016, when the government of Huixquilucan first came under the government of Enrique Vargas and his wife Romina Contreras, the current mayor, they both implemented a mechanism that has allowed them to win at least 6 million dollars by conditioning construction licenses to real estate developers in exchange of hiring Cocinas Integrales Europeas SA de CV, a company owned by Vargas’ family, to equip their properties.
Enriques Vargas served as mayor of Huixquilucan for two terms (the current legal limit in Mexico) between 2016-2018 and between 2019-2021. Upon concluding his second term his wife, Romina Contreras, won the election for the 2022-2024 period and has now been reelected for a second term for the 2025-2027 period.
who, directly or indirectly, requested construction licenses, became some of the main clients of Cocinas Integrales Europeas, company in which they invested at least 6.2 million dollars. Each of the groups bought between 50 thousand dollars and 1.5 million dollars worth in kitchen equipment.
Invoices held by Proceso also reveal that, just between 2021 and 2022, Cocinas Integrales Europeas sent 1.1 million pesos to a group of 11 companies with characteristics of “phantom” companies, as they don’t appear in any business directories and lack websites of their own, but they share legal representatives between them.
Family Business
Cocinas Integrales Europeas was founded in 1975 by Senator Vargas’ parents: Carlos Enrique Vargas Rodriguez and Maria del Milagro del Villar. The company was first established in Tlalnepantla, in the street Ebano #50. In 2016, when Enrique Vargas began his first term as mayor of Huixquilucan, the family moved the company to the Monte Real street, in the San Bartolomeo Coatepec district of Huixquilucan.
Since then, all or most of Cocinas Integrales Europeas’ clients have been real estate developers in Huixquilucan.
The company’s workshop, where Vargas’ brother Carlos Ignacio is also a partner, still remains in Monte Real street. However, in 2023, its administrative offices were moved to the Green Plaza mall, on the entrance of the exclusive private residential zone Bosque Real.
Green Plaza was built by Consorcio Inmobiliario V.G.O.R, a company owned by the controversial casino owner Oscar Rodriguez Borgio, currently under investigation for unpaid taxes, the alleged illegal extraction and sale of gasoline, and for his ownership of shares in Caja Libertad Servicios Financieros, a company under investigation for alleged money laundering through a network of “phantom” companies.
According to information available at the Public Registry of Property and Commerce of Mexico City, Enrique Vargas became a shareholder of Consorcio Inmobiliario V.G.O.R, after Green Plaza’s construction was finished.
You may read the complete investigation here: https://www.proceso.com.mx/nacional/2025/1/22/el-senador-enrique-vargas-la-alcaldesa-de-huixquilucan-arman-negocio-con-cocinaspor120mdp-344214.html