David Colmenares’ ASF detected minor irregularities in the 2023 public accounts

MEXICO CITY (apro).- Depleted by criticism against its head, David Colmenares Páramo, the Superior Audit Office of the Federation (ASF) today released a first series of 68 audits related to the 2023 public accounts, in which it reviewed the expenditure of 24,322 million pesos, of which it determined only 563 million pesos remain to be clarified, 81% of them attributed to federalized education expenses of state governments.

As it has done in recent years, the ASF delivered audit reports with few observations and with small – or even non-existent – ​​amounts to clarify, even in million-dollar works, such as the rehabilitation of the Córdoba-Veracruz highway, where it had observations for 203 thousand pesos in a sample of 103 million pesos, or the construction of a unit in the Santa Fe military hospital, in Mexico City, where there was not a single peso to clarify in a work of 251 million pesos.

In the same tone, the ASF did not find a penny wasted in the extinction of the National Popular Housing Fund Trust, of 156 million pesos, or in the nearly 600 million pesos spent by the National Natural Gas Control Center in information and communication technologies, and detected irregularities in just 2 million 728 thousand pesos spent by the National Water Commission (Conagua) on a 203 million pesos project in Concordia, Sinaloa.

The oversight body reported less than one million pesos pending clarification in the management of the ports of Ensenada, Lázaro Cárdenas and Progreso, and detected 864 thousand pesos of alleged irregularities in more than 1.61 billion pesos spent by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) on three large projects.

The only federal agency that had observations for relatively high amounts – although ridiculous compared to the sums invested in works – was the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT), which in seven audits had observations for 96 million pesos, for a total of 2,515 million pesos invested.

Censorship

In this first delivery of audit reports of the Public Account 2023, the ASF reported practically no poor management of the federal government, and only 458 million pesos by state governments, 5% of the 8 thousand 609 million pesos of federalized spending that were reviewed on this occasion.

Under the leadership of David Colmenares, who joined the ASF during Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term, with the approval of several PRI cadres, the oversight body drastically reduced its observations and complaints about irregularities in public spending, both in the federal government and in the states, regardless of the political color of their governor.

In fact, three of his former collaborators at the ASF have warned that the head of the oversight body negotiates with governors, secretaries and party leaders to carry out audits “in a customized way” or to outright censor the sensitive parts of the reports: in the last five years, Dona Muna Buchahin, former director of forensic auditing, Gerardo Lozano Dubernard, former special auditor of financial compliance, and Agustín Caso Raphael, who is in a legal battle to remain in the special performance audit, have publicly denounced this modus operandi.

Buchahin, who revealed the money diversion schemes operated during the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto and known as the Master Scam, documented in his book how Colmenares delivered “quotas of positions” to all political parties to turn the ASF into a business machine. based on audits.

Lozano, for his part, denounced in interviews and columns the “capture” of the ASF by its head, who changed its internal regulations – eliminating, among others, its Board of Directors and the Internal Audit Unit – to concentrate the main powers of the institution, such as the presentation of complaints, which he would use as leverage to negotiate his reelection with the political parties.

At the time of challenging his dismissal, ordered by Colmenares, Agustín Caso accused the head of the ASF of removing certain uncomfortable audits, but also of forcing the auditors to apply “self-censorship” and “abandon or push back the teams of auditors.” in his mission”; In a letter, the auditor stated that, under Colmenares’ management, “if a simple evaluation makes an official uncomfortable, it disappears.”

According to Caso, Colmenares’ team does not allow auditors to “incorporate issues of national relevance” and subjects audit reports to a “non-technical” review to “remove any words or findings that are not politically functional in the short term.”

Last year, Congresswoman María Elena Pérez-Jaen Zermeño revealed how, in 2021, Colmenares hired Marco Fernando Mier Velazco, the brother of Ignacio Mier Velazco, coordinator of Morena in the Chamber of Deputies, an institution on which the ASF itself depends, at the ASF.