Control entities put tatequieto to the corrupt

The reports received by the Office of the Attorney General, the Comptroller’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office on alleged mismanagement of the resources destined to attend to the emergency caused by the spread of the coronavirus and the quarantine to counteract it increase daily. So far, these entities have carried out 1,250 processes that link office secretaries, mayors, governors, directors of decentralized entities and even ministers.

The most common practice, identified by control entities, is cost overruns in market delivery contracts to the most vulnerable population.

The Attorney General of the Nation, Fernando Carrillo Flórez, said that the control body is carrying out a total of 237 disciplinary and 670 preventive processes, as well as evaluating another 185 records as part of the actions undertaken in defense of the rights of citizens, ethnic communities, health workers and the surveillance of the resources destined to attend the emergency in the country.

Carrillo Flórez highlighted that the entity works on five fronts to address the current situation, which are the enlistment for the medical-healthcare infrastructure, the protection of workers, the control of hoarding, the protection of the population deprived of liberty and surveillance of public resources.

“Corruption is a factor of violence that has the capacity to kill, it is an attack on the fundamental rights of citizens, especially when it violates the right to health or plays with food security or with vital aid for the survival of the Colombians, ”said the attorney.

Before the observations of the Attorney General, several local and regional administrations suspended some contracts, as happened in Chocó, where last Thursday the governor in charge, Jefferson Mena, it did so with contract 0126 for 130 million pesos, with which it was intended to carry out health information strategies to prevent the pandemic.

Through the Directorate of Information, Analysis and Immediate Reaction, the Comptroller has issued early warnings about alleged cost overruns, ambiguities and contractual inconsistencies in 26 of the 32 Governors, as well as in 67 municipal and district mayors, thanks to the powers recently granted by the legislative already endorsed by the Constitutional Court. (See parentheses)

After these alerts, in 21 contracts for the covid-19 the possible cost overruns were reduced to $ 7,566 million.

The Comptroller Carlos Felipe Cordova He explained that “two of the aforementioned fiscal responsibility processes have emerged from the alerts, one in Sincelejo and the other in Arauca, both for alleged cost overruns in contracts to deliver food kits to vulnerable populations, totaling $ 2,246 million.

Another result of these alerts is the opening of several preliminary inquiries and the evaluation of different cases.

Likewise, the comptroller has issued 22 resolutions ordering the functional intervention of 132 contracts for a total value of more than 297,755 million pesos.

For its part, the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation has carried out 125 investigative initiatives and 40 inquiries, has issued 140 orders from the Judicial Police and reviewed more than 3,000 contracts. Along these lines, the prosecutors delegated to the Supreme Court of Justice carry out 14 processes against graduates, including a minister and 11 governors.

One of the processes is the one that involves the Minister of Agriculture, Rodolfo Enrique Zea, whose alert was set by the Comptroller, since the first resources that were approved in the Colombia Agro Produce line, from Finagro, went to large bank customers for $ 213,566 billion, without any control of their urgency and verification of their destination, and none of the laying lines was production.

“It is not possible or acceptable for any official in this country to keep the resources or appropriate, or use them improperly, under any circumstances, and less in the pandemic,” said the prosecutor Francisco Barbosa.

That these three institutions in the country are working in an articulated way was one of the requests that the citizens who track corruption and saw how disciplinary, fiscal and criminal decisions came very late.

So Andrés Hernández, director of Transparency for Colombia, celebrated that this emergency has been achieved. “We have raised from the beginning that one of the key issues was that the audit could be done in real time by the control bodies, is that it could be done with information that was available not only for them but for citizens, on the platform of state contracting, in as much detail as possible, ”he said.

He added that it is okay for the announcements to be made, but that the results must be passed quickly, “respecting due process, the prosecutor, the comptroller and the attorney must provide very precise information on the progress of the investigations, which is what It will allow us to know if that very public outing that they have had is reaching results. ”

With the new declaration of emergency, the entities must continue to monitor the alleged irregularities that continue to arise during and after the emergency.