Public Records Search in Mexico

If you are checking a Mexican company or individual from the United States or Canada, the first thing worth knowing is that there is no equivalent of a single national records search. This page maps what exists, who holds it and what it actually proves.

The record types that matter for business decisions

Corporate registry records

Held by the Registro Público de Comercio, through registry offices distributed nationally — BLOC covers 147. Inscription produces a folio mercantil electrónico, and the underlying document is the notarized acta constitutiva.

Shows: legal existence, incorporation date, corporate purpose, capital, legal representatives and the scope of their powers.
Does not show: whether the company is solvent, litigious or trading at all.

Court records

Split across state courts, federal jurisdictional bodies, federal labor authorities and state labor authorities. Thousands of individual courts, no shared index, publication practices that differ by state.

Shows: commercial disputes, insolvency proceedings, labor claims, amparo actions, criminal proceedings.
Does not show: disputes settled before filing, or matters in arbitration.

Tax records

The SAT publishes several taxpayer lists, of which the most consequential for a foreign buyer is Article 69-B — taxpayers presumed to have issued invoices for operations that never occurred (EFOS). The list runs in two stages, presumed and definitive, with the definitive list published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación.

Shows: whether the RFC is active, and whether the taxpayer appears on the 69-B lists.
Consequence: invoices issued by a definitively listed taxpayer have no fiscal effect, and the exposure lands on whoever used them to support a deduction.

Property records

Held by state-level Registro Público de la Propiedad offices. Ownership, liens and encumbrances on real estate, by state.

Sanctions and debarment

Includes the Mexican federal register of suppliers barred from government contracting, and international lists such as OFAC that a US or Canadian buyer will be screening against regardless.

Who holds what

Record	Authority	National index?
Corporate registration	Registro Público de Comercio (147 registry offices)	No — by registry office
Civil and commercial litigation	State judiciaries (32)	No
Federal proceedings and insolvency	Federal jurisdictional bodies	Partially published
Labor claims	Federal and state labor authorities	No
Tax status and SAT 69-B	SAT	Yes, published lists
Real property	State property registries	No
Supplier debarment	Federal administrative authorities	Yes

Searching from outside Mexico

Three obstacles account for most failed attempts.

• Fragmentation. There is no one system to query, so completeness depends on knowing every system that could hold a record
• Access. Some registries and courts publish nothing online and require a written request or a physical visit
• Name handling. Accents, abbreviations, compound given names and two surnames produce many valid spellings of the same subject. Literal string matching misses most of them

BLOC exists to collapse that into one query: litigation from all four judicial systems back to 1996, registry data from 147 registry offices, tax compliance including SAT 69-B, and sanctions screening, matched with name normalization rather than exact strings. For a broader verification workflow, see our legal background verification in Mexico service.