Grupo Cobra owes about $100 million in construction excise taxes to municipalities

On July 15, 2026, Radio Isla reports that the mayor of Aguada, Christian Cortés, denounced on Pega'os en la Mañana that the company Cobra owes about $100 million in construction excise taxes to Puerto Rico's municipalities. According to the executive, the company has lost the case in the local courts, but now tries to take the matter before the Financial Oversight Board and Congress.

"Here we are proactive on that topic, bringing all the related evidence that this is a levy that has been collected in Puerto Rico since 1996, that company Cobra simply does not want to pay what it is required by law to pay in Puerto Rico and that it wants to take money that belongs to the communities to do works," he explained. He asserted that the municipalities will prevail and that the company is trying to apply a federal-government exemption to a private firm, an argument that, he said, the courts have rejected. "We have FEMA documentation in which it notes that municipalities can include in the cost estimate everything related to the construction excise and that that is an eligible cost," he held. That is his voice. Radio Isla does not publish here a Cobra answer nor a municipality-by-municipality breakdown of the $100 million. The "about" and the 1996 stand.

This excise debt is not the $52.6 million hit from the inventory tax on medicines that the Federation of Mayors took to Robert F. Mujica Jr. on July 9, nor the $35 million for municipal highways from that same meeting. Three municipal boxes. The reader who wants the interview has the Radio Isla URL at the foot.

Source: Radio Isla. https://radioisla.tv/cobra-adeuda-cerca-de-100-millones-en-arbitrios-de-construccion-a-municipios/