Breathe
The Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity team is composed of Laura Islas, Frida Mendoza, Concepción Peralta Silverio, Ami Sosa Vera and Eduardo Buendía.
What do maternal mortality, reconstruction after the 2017 earthquakes, shortcomings in education, the search for justice, unfinished public works and the Superior Audit Office of the Federation (ASF) have in common?
At first glance it could be said that nothing, but it turns out that the investigation that we published this week in Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity "In Search of the ASF's Missing Money" has all the ingredients.
The Public Account reports from 2000 to 2020, as well as the databases provided by its Public Audit Consultation System, were the starting point for an investigation that seeks to go beyond what the ASF presents and follow up on the money with irregularities and which is supposed to be returned to the federation.
Let's take a step back briefly, because understanding it can be a headache: the most important mission of the Supreme Audit Office is to oversee the correct use of federal public resources and prevent acts of corruption. How does it achieve this? By documenting possible deviations and asking for explanations, and in case they do not occur, requesting the return of the money and denouncing those responsible.
So, what did we find in this research that took months?
That in the first four years with David Colmenares Páramo as superior auditor (2017-2020), the ASF has only recovered 17 out of every 100 pesos flagged with irregularities.
Following the math, we can compare previous administrations and from 2000 to 2016 we find that the average redemption is 53 pesos per 100.
For this reason, our investigation is called "In Search of the Missing Money", because of the more than 454 billion pesos noted as irregular from 2017 to 2020, more than 378 billion pesos remain in limbo.
But beyond the numbers, for this research we decided to find the heart of it, because every audit, every irregular peso had a main purpose that was for the benefit of society.
Due to the volume of money and information, we took five flagship states, which in common have observations with multimillion amounts from 2018 and 2019, the first Public Accounts delivered by David Colmenares, and reviewed the requests for clarification and observation statements, actions that according to the manual, can proceed in a complaint if necessary.
In Morelos there are more than 6 billion pesos not clarified in 2018, of which we chose to review the money that was for reconstruction and the victims. What was the finding? A diaspora of public money that was being lost like sand: Morelos received 15 billion 884 million pesos in aid alone, of which 2 billion 637 million were "lost" or not justified.
The ASF has 568 million in observation sheets, while the state auditing body ESAF has 1,325 million and 743 million pesos are missing or there are no works to justify their expenditure.
For this chapter we traveled through Jojutla and verified how there are still victims who have not received help: 200 families who had houses and were not helped to replace them. The bureaucracy was very strict with them, they were discriminated from aid because they were the poorest and did not have land. Meanwhile, with businessmen and suppliers, the law was waived. There were "bribes", non-existent works, of lower quality, cost overruns, payments for works not done, non-existent classrooms. Businessmen who promised to build houses and left with the cards.
We met Aniceto, Antonio and the Tinoco family. They did not receive any help. Ariadna was not listened to in her needs and five years after the earthquake and three years after the ASF observed these resources, but inexplicably did not proceed to immediate action to recover them.
If the ASF recovers the money, the highest amount of 363,111 million pesos, more than 1,000 houses could be built for the victims.
There was no better metaphor for Tamaulipas than to title its public works as a bottomless pit, money and money in limbo and the proof is in audits with record amounts.
In a single action, in 2018, about 9 billion pesos were requested to be clarified. Doors were knocked on, requests for information were processed and the response was general: there are no records that can give an answer, incompetence to respond.
Inconsistencies in public spending in Tamaulipas are money pits to which the bottom is not visible. Some of them are about to be six years old and there is no variation in the clarifications reported by the Audit Office.
Running into a wall was a similar reality in Tabasco, where the entire state accumulated in 2018 more than 12 billion pesos and more than 11 thousand remain in limbo.
In a request for clarification involving more than 37 agencies, we found that half of them corresponded to universities, technological colleges or high schools, which together accounted for irregularities amounting to 435 million 570 thousand pesos.
The money lost in education in Tabasco could possibly be used so that its students could have decent bathrooms with water, air-conditioned classrooms or facilities that shelter them from the rain and allow them to study dry after more than two hours of travel from home, but finding a response from the Ministries of Education, Finance or Public Function was an impossible mission, both personally and in requests via transparency.
Talking about justice in Jalisco is a labyrinthine issue, similar to what we find in the reports of the Audit, that while living a humanitarian crisis by being the state where more people disappear, the state has not checked since 2018 more than 5 billion pesos.
While the state has become a big pit, 45 million corresponding to the trust fund "New Criminal Justice System and Oral Trials of the State of Jalisco" -created for the implementation of the New Criminal Justice System, fundamental for justice in this crime- is lost.
How could this $45 million help? It could possibly help 19-year-old Héctor to be wanted within 72 hours, after he was taken from his home by armed men without an arrest warrant, the same situation of Carlos Maximiliano and Miguel. The extent of insecurity, where you cannot feel safe at home, has the people of Guadalajara in fear, and they expect nothing from justice.
In Chiapas, we found an audit which indicated that the Chiapas State Health Institute (ISECH) irregularly administered 1,258 million pesos from the Health Services Contribution Fund (FASSA) aimed at improving medical care for people without social security and the payment of payroll.
Interestingly, this fund, FASSA in 2019 had as its main commitment to decrease maternal mortality in the country. That year Chiapas reported 124% progress in the fund's maternal mortality reduction indicator, but there is no budgetary evidence to explain how that goal was achieved.
Traveling through Chiapas, it was possible to witness the deficiencies in the health system, ambulances on boxes of soft drinks and see how "normal" it is to find testimonies of women who lost a baby or simply how ultrasounds were denied.
This chapter was called "The blender accounts" because most of the lost money was dissolved among 14 different bank accounts that ISECH used to manage the fund's resources, a scheme that is not new and has been practiced in the state since 2012. With the amount of public money that is in limbo, 744 equipped ambulances and a thousand ultrasound machines could be purchased.
These cases are a small sample of what happens if the Superior Audit Office of the Federation does not comply with its duty.
We invite you to read the complete investigation on the Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity website.
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