Errors in the auditing of public accounts target Mexico's top auditor

Senior Auditor David Colmenares, on his inauguration in 2018.

Awaited for months, the review of the public account for 2019, the first year of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has turned out to be a fiasco.

Published on Saturday, the Superior Audit Office of the Federation (ASF), the state's supervisory body, took just a couple of days to reject some of its findings, among them perhaps the most important, the extraordinary cost of cancellation of the Texcoco airport, in the State of Mexico, which promoted the PRI government of Enrique Peña Nieto.

In its report, the ASF estimated that abandoning the project would cost 331,000 million pesos, about 16,500 million dollars.

On Monday he reversed himself in a statement, pointing out a "methodological deficiency" and this Tuesday the Secretary of the Treasury, Arturo Herrera, delved into the controversy by exposing serious deficiencies in the auditors' calculations.

At the center of this controversy appears David Colmenares, head of the ASF, the target of criticism from the López Obrador Executive and civil society organizations.

On Monday, the president was the first to criticize the auditors' accounts.

“Your data is wrong.

I have other data, ”he said.

“It will be reported here.

And I hope they do it too, those of the ASF ... I would like you to clarify about that data, which is wrong.

It's exaggerated, ”the president said in his morning press conference.

Arturo Herrera posted a video on his Twitter account on Tuesday in which he expressed his "surprise" at the "errors [by the auditors] in a basic issue of financial accounting."

The head of the Treasury added: “We understand that in any audit there may be methodological discrepancy, but this is not the case.

Here the issue is that they did not use basic accounting criteria ”.

Criticism against Colmenares transcends the case of the controversial Peña Nieto airport.

In several interviews this week, the senior auditor rejected the conclusions of his colleagues in the report on the Ministry of Public Function, a government agency whose task complements that of the ASF.

In the report presented on Saturday, the auditors indicated discretion in the investigations of the Public Function, led by Irma Eréndira Sandoval, and the obstruction of the inspection process.

Colmenares later said that the Public Function did not hinder the work of the auditors.

EL PAÍS has contacted the senior auditor via text message during the preparation of this note, but has not received a response.

The near future appears as an obstacle course for Colmenares.

In October, the ASF will deliver the first round of results on the review of the public account for 2020, López Obrador's second year.

Before, the auditors must report on the response of the agencies audited during 2019. In the report they delivered on Saturday, advanced by EL PAÍS, the ASF indicated that the federal government agencies committed irregularities in spending more than 12,000 million pesos .

For the total of 2019, they are more than 14,000 million.

According to the report

The ASF and the superior audit in times of majorities,

published at the end of last year by the organization México Evalúa, the agencies usually knock down the allegations of irregularities of the ASF.

"Between 2000 and 2018, only in 10% of the cases the irregularity was confirmed, determining as appropriate the compensation and reimbursement of the amounts spent."

The Annual Audit Program

Chosen almost three years ago for a term of eight, Colmenares has been the focus of criticism for some time, mainly because of the criteria used by the ASF to prepare the Annual Audit Plan (PAA), the agency's roadmap.

Each year, the audit reports, among other things, which secretaries and agencies of the federal government it will analyze, what contracts, programs or agreements it will put under the scrutiny of the auditors.

And the problem, experts say, starts from there.

Marco Fernández, professor and researcher at the School of Government of the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, points out precisely the example of the PRI airport.

“That case is a disaster on all sides.

I found the correction they made worrying.

At best, it reveals incompetence.

And at worst, that this reaction comes from influences not from the legal order, but from the political order.

But first of all it is a disaster because in the Annual Program it was determined that it was going to be a performance audit without saying why.

That is absurd ”.

In addition to the entity to be audited, the ASF decides what type of analysis it will apply in each case.

For an unclear reason, the agency chose a performance audit for the entire aerodrome, a type of analysis that focuses on the vices - or virtues - of government programs, but does not follow the path of spending.

The ASF also scheduled 11 financial compliance audits for specific aspects of public spending related to the works.

The auditors indicated irregularities amounting to 3,215 million pesos.

Fernández explains that in contexts such as the PRI airport, where there have also been allegations of corruption, the ASF must schedule forensic audits, characterized by a rigorous control of the use of public resources, a step above financial compliance audits.

Eduardo Bohórquez, executive director of the organization Transparencia Mexicana, goes a step further: “Colmenares should explain why he chose one type of audit and not another.

We are all going to discuss the amount of the airport and nobody has asked him that. "

The Buchahin case

Since Colmenares' arrival at the ASF, the agency has carried out fewer and fewer forensic audits.

In the Mexico Evalúa study, the authors point out that the same senior auditor "has stated that the audit should preferably be reoriented towards performance audits."

And they add: "To stop practicing financial and forensic compliance audits, which are intended to review the exercise of the assigned budget and its deviations is risky because it would be compromising the scope and purpose of the ASF."

The abandonment of this type of audits is directly linked to another of the controversies of the Colmenares era.

Just two months after taking office, in June 2018, the senior auditor fired the person in charge of forensic audits, Dr. Muna Dora Buchahin, who shortly before had denounced the massive diversion of resources from the secretariats of the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-20128), a scandal that later became known as The Master Scam.

Colmenares did not give much explanation about the dismissal, but part of the opposition and civil society organizations criticized the decision and pointed to its political background.

Bohórquez says that “after the Master Scam there had been a period of silence, then Muna Dora Buchahin came out ... There was a feeling that the ASF was not doing anything.

They had the theme of the pandemic as a parapet, but it had already worn off.

And on Saturday they came out as they did, ”criticizes the head of Transparency Mexicana.

Subscribe here

to the

newsletter

of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of this country