Although in 2022 there were referrals to the Department of Justice due to the apparent irregularities with the Rural Infrastructure and Permanent Improvements Program – which in practical terms replaced the pork barrel – and which is now administered by the Land Authority (AT), the situation, far from being resolved, has worsened, said Comptroller Yesmín Valdivieso, who does not rule out making new referrals, this time to federal authorities.
The official said that this summer she expects to release the audit conducted on the AT, and if her office's parallel investigation concludes before September 30, she will also release it. If the inquiry ends after that date, she would wait until 2025 to release the results so that she is not accused of partisan political intentions.
"We have found a lack of procedures in the finance area, deficiencies in regulations that already existed, incorrect accounting records, incomplete files, the contracts have no details such as 'we are allocating this much money for these specific works,' for example. They don't say what type of works or to whom that work was assigned. In other words, everything very, very different from what we expected", she stated in an interview with EL VOCERO.
In some cases, money was allocated for certain works and there was no record of whether it was used in full and, if not, there was no accountability for what happened to the surplus. In other instances, the organizations received the money, but there was no formal contract for carrying out the works with terms and conditions.
Likewise, funds were allocated for some organizations to provide community services, but the first thing they did was fix up the administrative offices and then -with the surplus- the money was invested in the original purpose.
The Comptroller criticized that the fund has also been used like the old pork barrel that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional, insofar as public money is used to give away electrical appliances and equipment.
"If you want to give a refrigerator or a cistern to some people, at least before there had to be a resolution of the Legislative Assembly, it was put to a vote and there was a record that it had been approved. Now there is none. There is no trace of that", Valdivieso lamented.
The worst part for the Comptroller is that last year the amount available for district legislators to have "for community services" was increased from 15% to 50%, which is extremely dangerous in an election year.
"Election years don't sit well with me, because when you do good, you do it because you truly understand, and I'm not saying there isn't an intention to do good, but you do good quietly. You do good humbly. Not with the expectation that people will vote for you. That's the part I don't like. With public funds there has to be transparency. But here there isn't even the transparency of how things were done; rather, the transparency comes when the legislator appears in photos handing over the refrigerator or the wooden door. That, to me, is petty politics", she declared.
The official insisted that when public funds are administered, the people in charge must follow rules and make sure that money is put to good use.
Nonetheless, she acknowledged that part of the problem lies in the fact that for some people in government it is very difficult to refuse to follow the regulations when it is a legislator calling and demanding things like "I want you to give so much money to So-and-so."
"You know that, somehow, when someone with a position like that calls, it can even be intimidating. To be honest, from the very beginning, and when I found out that they had passed that (the increase in discretionary funds)… I felt terrible", she expressed.
Approved in 2022, Act 173 created the fund that is nourished by collections from the .1% of the Sales and Use Tax (IVU). The bill contained many other matters, said Valdivieso. However, the bill was never sent to her office for evaluation and recommendations, which is the regular course.
"To me, this was hidden in the text of the law… If the pork barrel was declared unconstitutional and had to go through a resolution, there was more transparency than now; but here the senator or the representative decides where the money goes and who questions them?", she indicated.
Although the Department of Agriculture initially made referrals to the Department of Justice, which in turn recommended that an Independent Special Prosecutor (FEI) be appointed, the Office of the FEI Panel halted the inquiry because they are awaiting the findings of the Office of the Comptroller to avoid duplication of efforts and given that entity's specialization in audits on the use of money, said for her part Eloína Torres Cancel, spokesperson for the FEI.
The referrals specifically concerned alleged actions by the former executive director of the AT, Dorally Rivera Martínez, the former Finance administrator, Astrid Rivera Febres, and engineer Miguel Santiago Irizarry.
"Prosecutor Emilio Arill had been assigned, but he retired… and now they have assigned it to (prosecutors Zulma) Fuster, (Ramón) Mendoza and Fabiola Acarón. But for the FEI's purposes, that case is paralyzed until the Comptroller's investigation is finished", she said.
The inquiry covers more actions, the Comptroller revealed.
When Valdivieso was asked how serious the situation is and whether it could involve legislators, the official declined to specify, on the understanding that there are still points that must be corroborated by her office's legal affairs area.
However, to the question of whether criminal charges should be filed regarding the handling that has been given to the funds, Valdivieso did not hesitate: "If it were up to us, yes… but that depends on other entities".
She acknowledged that there may be a perception that after the complaints "nothing gets resolved," so she pointed out that her office does not have the power to "fix" things.
The most she can do is make recommendations, and in this case, hers is that even though the audit has not concluded, the fund should not continue under the AT, since it does not have sufficient or prepared personnel to ensure that the funds are managed for public purposes.
"It should be in the hands of another agency", she maintained.
The representative of the Citizens' Victory Movement, José Bernardo Márquez, who raised the alarm about the unconstitutionality of the law that allows distributing money to district legislators, said that this month marks two years since he made the first observations and described it as a "total outrage" that nothing has changed.
"The Comptroller agreed with me at the time and answered my referral saying that she agrees that the design of the pork barrel was illegal and unconstitutional and urged the Legislature to amend it. Then the Legislature has not done that to correct the legal problem that was pointed out. What it did was amend it to increase the individual discretion of legislators in the use of the funds. That is why we are seeing more legislators making weekly distributions and posting them on their social networks", he denounced.
He also lamented that the Department of Justice refused to evaluate the law and issue an opinion on its constitutionality under the argument that it was a request only from him and not from the full House of Representatives, which Márquez believes is not necessary. He said that for this reason, more recently, he made a referral to the Office of the Inspector General, seeking "some action with greater urgency… It has been two years of this, nobody uses any tool, ministerial, administrative, legal to halt the fund… time keeps running and, worse still, the funds continue to be administered in a highly questionable manner".
As this edition went to press, it had not been possible to obtain a reaction from the Land Authority.
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