A bill in Congress has set off alarm bells. Relive an article of a regulation denounced as a key piece of a plan by the clan of businessman Euclides Torres, who has a good part of the business of transit support centers in Colombia.
The unions of the Automotive Diagnostic Centers (CDA) suffered for almost a year due to Law 2283 of 2023, issued on January 5 of that year. In the project approved in Congress, which had the objective of guaranteeing the proper functioning of the Automotive Education Centers (CEA), a rule was included that required the issuance of insurance that covered damages to third parties for each technical-mechanical inspection. Issuing the insurance policy, which cost between 21 and 23 percent of the value of that review, was mandatory. This did not change the price of the procedure, which was stipulated at a maximum of 298,000 pesos by the Ministry of Transportation.
At the time, the Colombian Support Corporation (Corpcap), which brings together small businessmen from the CDAs, He warned that it could be a strategy to weaken them, bankrupt them and open the door to a monopolization of the sector, which could be of interest to Torres, who, according to Nicolás Petro, was a close collaborator in the campaign of his father, President Gustavo Petro.
Even the former deputy of Atlántico, prosecuted for the crimes of money laundering and illicit enrichment, assured that the political clan financed the remembered P event in Barranquilla.
“The most likely thing is that the Torres clan wants to take over the CDA and all the support organizations. We are small businessmen. The clan is always involved and billing for everything we do,” Juan Steiner Carvajal, president of Corpcap, said at the time.
Due to the demands of several groups in the sector, the Constitutional Court declared unenforceable in November 2023 the article that obliged them to issue the policy. All interventions, including that of the Federation of Colombian Insurers (Fasecolda), asked to overturn this requirement, except the Colombian Association of CDA.
SEMANA learned that there is a group of diagnostic centers that already issued the policy in alliance with the Seguros Mundial company. After the regulation was issued, they were the only ones who could continue insuring the vehicles that entered for a technical-mechanical inspection.
Now it draws the attention of the unions that Bill 428 of 2024, filed in April of this year, revived the policy in a very similar way to the approach in the case that denounced the Torres clan for its supposed benefits.
The initiative, by Julián López, representative to the Chamber for Valle del Cauca of the U Party, rescues insurance by making it mandatory for all vehicle owners, without it being delivered by the CDAs.
“All vehicles registered in Colombia for private service and motorcycles and similar in the national territory must be covered by mandatory liability insurance. extracontractual civil law that covers material damage caused to third parties in traffic accidents,” the project says.
And he adds that the companies that offer it will be able to determine “with freedom to offer the rate and other characteristics of the insurance.”
Faced with this, lawyer Alejandro Márquez, an expert in the transportation sector, denounces the similarity between the monkey and the new project. Furthermore, he assures that the only insurance company that can issue it at a competitive price is Seguros Mundial, the same one that sold more than 520,000 policies during the validity of the controversial article that harmed the CDAs.
“The policy exists today and the only insurer that has already made the deposit to the Financial Superintendency to sell it is Seguros Mundial. It is identical to that enshrined in article 6 of Law 2283, which was declared unenforceable by the Constitutional Court. It has too many exclusions, in addition to a deductible of a current monthly minimum wage. Today it is not understood what the desire is for this policy to have to be acquired and come into force,” Márquez said in SEMANA.
The lawyer Carlos Rubio, who advised the CDAs in the process of eliminating the article that obliged them to issue the policy, also expressed his objections to the matter.
And he added that the insurer’s profits in five months, through CDA insurance, were close to 23,000 million pesos. “I’m doing conservative math,” Rubio said.
Finally, he assured that he would not be surprised if the Torres clan was behind some of the repercussions of the new initiative.
“You see them playing in the Driver Recognition Centers (CRC), but the way in which they are involved in collection and in the Sicov, in the CDAs, is documented. On the surface it is not seen, but on the invisible ropes it would not be remote,” said the lawyer.
SEMANA learned about the World Insurance file at the Transportation Superintendency, where it was investigated for alleged incentives for users to attend a CDA, covering part of the cost of the review.
The Superintendency did not sanction, but the owners of the centers believe that this policy may continue to be issued by some CDAs, as occurred with the previous law, in order to be more attractive to service users and accumulate more clients.
The author of the project speaks
In conversation with SEMANA, representative Julián López highlighted the attributes of his proposal.
“He wants to give Colombians the opportunity to secure their assets. It would cost 70 pesos a day for motorcycles and about 110 for cars. It can be worth between 36,000 and 42,000 pesos annually. It is needed and it is a beauty,” said the congressman, who assures that it is a “wonderful project.”
And he denied that it was aid to the Torres family or a possible business for Seguros Mundial.
“The Torres are not in that business, they do not sell insurance. CDAs have nothing to do with this. (…) When insurance was required, the only insurer that was willing was Seguros Mundial. Other insurers will come out to offer it, surely. “It is a neutral and necessary project,” she indicated.
He highlighted the need for mandatory insurance to be approved: “The Constitutional Court is the biggest promoter of the project.”
The Euclides Torres clan has just lost a battle in the Congress of the Republic with the collapse of the “safe and inclusive mobility” project. which aimed to increase the collection of the Control and Surveillance System (Sicov) of the transit support centers.
The project that revives the monkey will be debated in the second debate in the House of Representatives, after being approved unanimously in the Sixth Commission of the House.
In response to the complaints, Seguros Mundial told SEMANA that it was not the only insurer that offered the CDA policy and that the bill is not of “particular interest.”
“Our commitment has always been to offer protection solutions for the different economic sectors of the country,” he responded.
