A labor court in Guatemala is treating former executives of a telecommunications company as if they had earned more per month than Cristiano Ronaldo, Stephen Curry, and LeBron James combined. Their claimed “average monthly salary”: US$4.47 million. The company on the receiving end is Millicom (Nasdaq: TIGO), parent company of Tigo Guatemala, one of the largest foreign investments in the country and a significant holding in U.S. mutual funds, institutional portfolios, and pension systems. This is not a normal severance dispute. The claims come from former executives tied to a multi-year bribery scheme (2012–2018) that funneled cash—including funds linked to drug-trafficking proceeds—to Guatemalan officials in exchange for favorable legislation and spectrum licenses. Millicom later took full control of the company, cooperated with U.S. authorities, and in late 2025 resolved the matter through a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, paying more than US$118 million. American shareholders already absorbed that cost as part of the effort to clean up the company. Now, some of those same former executives are using Guatemalan labor courts to demand hundreds of millions of dollars more in “severance,” based on these inflated salary figures. Judgments already totaling more than US$100 million are moving into the enforcement phase, while even larger claims remain pending. According to Millicom’s own accounting, realistic exposure would be closer to US$5 million. The next stage will be decisive. Four Supreme Court justices, sitting in constitutional matters, will hear these cases at the first level, followed by five Constitutional Court justices at the second level. These constitutional judges will have to decide whether or not to uphold extraordinarily disproportionate calculations and proceedings that have been challenged as being riddled with illegalities throughout the labor cases. For U.S. investors in TIGO, any forced payout translates directly into a loss of shareholder value in a Nasdaq-listed company whose Guatemalan operations are among the strongest in the group. Millicom has a significant percentage of U.S. investors whose financial interests could be directly affected if these proceedings are not resolved in strict accordance with Guatemalan law and constitutional guarantees. What these nine justices decide, across both levels of constitutional review, will have consequences that extend far beyond a labor dispute. For anyone considering investing in Guatemala, this constitutes a clear warning about rule-of-law and judicial risk: after a foreign company reports corruption, reaches a settlement with U.S. prosecutors, and implements reforms, local courts can still be used in an attempt to extract a second substantial sum from the same enterprise. This is only the first chapter of something much bigger. More this week(Wall Street Mav)