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The case of the children who ate horse and donkey meat for a year in Santander is the latest link to be discovered in a long chain of scandals in the School Food Plan (PAE) in Colombia.
The Office of the Comptroller General of the Nation has detected that, since 2014, More than 84,000 million pesos that should have been used to feed students in the poorest schools in the country have been squandered in acts of corruption, poor resource management and cost overruns.
(We recommend reading: Children were eating donkey meat in the PAE for a year)
In fact, only during the new coronavirus pandemic, the Comptroller’s Office established 30 alerts for alleged cost overruns in the management of PAE resources. These monies would add another 34,856 million pesos to the money wasted from this program.
Godson, come on I ask you a question, the man who makes the return of the cattle tickets, how is that shit?
Theft with children’s food has occurred across the country. In La Guajira, where it is known that many minors die of malnutrition each year, the Comptroller’s Office found in 2014 that the government contracted 500 food rations, but the contractor only delivered 200. In addition, the beneficiaries were charged 100 or 200 pesos, when this food is free.
One of the main concerns is the quality of the food supplied to minors. This year, Carlos Caicedo, governor of Magdalena, denounced that before the quarantine began in the country, in a school in the municipality of Guamal, children were offered a little egg, a potato and a glass of juice.
The complaint was made by the president through his social networks.
(Also: ‘Pull the ears’ from epidemiologists to the mayor of Bucaramanga)
In addition, the University of Quindío, in a four-year investigation that was delivered at the end of 2019, detailed that parasites such as toxoplasma, cryptosporidium and blastocystis were found in water and in foods such as lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and guava, which are used in the preparation of lunches in 10 PAE restaurants in Armenia.
Regarding food quality, the Minister of Education, María Victoria Angulo, said that the abuses against the PAE are unacceptable, with an impact on the health of children and adolescents.
“We have to redouble our efforts with the Secretariats of Education and Health throughout the health food route. We are working with the Comptroller’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office on normative projects in Congress with the inclusion of articles that make sanctions stronger, ”he said.
Cost overruns
Some of the biggest scandals in the PAE have to do with the cost overruns of food given to children. In the reports of the Comptroller’s Office it was indicated that, in Cartagena, for 2016, a kilo of breast that was worth 7,000 pesos was charged at 40,000 pesos.
Corruption with the PAE has reached the jungles of the Amazon, in Tarapacá inflated prices were found even in eggs, which were charged at 900 pesos each, or a soup pasta of 1,460 pesos that was billed for 5,050 pesos.
(We tell you: This is how the PAE school feeding program works)
The irregularities behind the PAE had one of their most critical points with the capture last February of Alejandro Hernández, who amassed a great fortune at the cost of controlling non-profit foundations that he used to win PAE contracts in capitals and towns of the Caribbean. With his plan, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, he became the ‘czar’ of the PAE.
The Prosecutor’s Office detailed that Hernández handled, in the last 10 years, contracts for 726,000 million pesos, embezzling the program even through strategies of bribery of politicians and municipal officials.
According to the investigation, Hernández managed to have control or interference in at least 1,500 contracts in municipalities of La Guajira, Magdalena, Sucre, Córdoba, Bolívar, Atlántico, Norte de Santander and Boyacá. At present, the investigations for the case continue and he was sheltered with a house for jail.
On the other hand, Santander had already been under the scrutiny of the authorities for the management of the PAE. Also in 2016, the Prosecutor’s Office showed how the operator Surcolombiana de Inversiones bought tamales for 30,000 pesos each.
The scandal transcended after it was confirmed that these foods had been purchased from a company dedicated to the sale of cranes in Meta.
(Read on: So parents can monitor PAE resources)
For these events, the Secretary of Education of Santander at the time, Ana Tarazona, was sent to jail; the PAE coordinator, Aníbal Gonzaléz, and the legal representative of Surcolombiana de Inversiones, Luisa Flórez.
The ‘czar’ of donkey meat
On Friday, the Prosecutor’s Office gave another blow to the crime that is behind the embezzlements in the PAE. Fernando Trujillo Gómez, a renowned Santander merchant who is called ‘Godfather’, was captured for supplying operators in this region with donkey meat or sick horses, to be given to the children in their food rations.
That comes out in the name of the man who killed the day, I give him the date and all the information comes out, but the address the man modifies it, but it comes out original
Trujillo, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, in association with other people, bought horses and donkeys on the Atlantic coast, then moved them with false tokens to Bucaramanga and slaughtered them there.
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Once slaughtered, Trujillo treated the meat with chemicals to alter the texture, try to make it softer and give it a reddish color. Later, they vacuum packed it and put stamps on it from companies dedicated to the commercialization of beef. The procedure was repeated between May 2018 and September 2019.
In addition to finding donkey and horse meat in slaughterhouses in Bucaramanga, the evidence against Trujillo are audios in which he speaks with a person who identified himself as the ‘Godson’. In the conversations, it was revealed how they falsified the slaughter labels and guides for the mobilization of livestock.
Some 2,000 kilos of donkey or horse meat were sold to three PAE operators in Santander.
“Godson, come on I ask you a question, the man who turns the cattle tickets, how is that shit? How does it come out? In whose name or what? ”Trujillo said.
To which the ‘Godson’ replied: “That comes out in the name of the man who killed the day, I give him the date and all the information comes out, but the address the man modifies it, but it comes out original.”
In one of the conversations with the ‘Godson’, which are held by the Prosecutor’s Office, they talk about the chemicals they use in the process: “The old women in the kitchen almost give me a stick because it is very tough (the meat), it does not go in a block and it comes out like rubber.”
Trujillo replied that “this is like beef, one is for sweating and another for roasting.” It was also known that there were three operators who bought more than 2,000 kilos of meat from Trujillo weekly. One of them is Nutrimos Santander 2019, which in June of last year was fined by the Santander government after supplying food in poor condition to a school in San Vicente de Chucurí, where 38 minors presented symptoms of intoxication.
(Also: The worrying result of the necropsy of a dead manatee in Santander)
Trujillo was sent to jail for the crimes of food corruption in a homogeneous and simultaneous contest on 18 occasions, procedural fraud and falsehood in a private document.
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