The Attorney General’s Office filed a criminal case against Vice President Francia Márquez for the crime of subsidy fraud. The complaint by House Representative Hernán Cadavid was based on the fact that the current official received the Solidarity Income subsidy during the pandemic.
However, the investigating entity established that the Vice President did not commit any crime and met the legal requirements to be a beneficiary of the program. Between April 2020 and July 2022, The current Government official received 25 transfers from the Department of Social Prosperity, which amount to more than 4 million 460 thousand pesos.
“It is unlikely that the punishable conduct of subsidy fraud could have been incurred “If it is known that the lists of potentially benefiting households were compiled with the Sisbén databases, whose information existed long before the creation of the program,” the case file document reads.
The third prosecutor delegated to the Supreme Court, Javier Cárdenas, warned that the intervention of the beneficiaries was “null”, Well, they didn’t even have to provide bank accounts to receive the subsidy money. “These accounts were obtained through the databases of the Financial and Solidarity Economy superintendencies,” explains the prosecutor.
For this reason, the investigation concluded that Francia Márquez “not only did he not engage in any fraudulent behavior or deceptive to benefit from the Solidarity Income Program, but also – contrary to what the complainants think – she did have the right to those monetary transfers.
To receive this benefit, the requirement was to appear in Sisbén III with a score equal to or less than 30 points, on a scale of 01 to 100. And the current Vice President had a score of 22.14 and, in addition, she did not have periodic and fixed income.
