The management he assumed in December with the mayor Francisco Lo Presti The head commissioned an audit of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the National University of Cuyo, in order to establish a kind of “starting point.” That’s how they were reviewed treasury, assets, budget, and administrative processes. This allowed the auditors to verify subsidies, purchases, contracts, and the financial status of the commune’s registrable assets, real estate, automobiles, and machine tools. The disaster they found was such that there were parameters that could not be established and that depend on new controls.
Daniel Orozco and Janina Ortiz: the context 2023
A year ago, the “Janina mayor” plan had fallen into disgrace and Daniel Orozcohis wife and several officials left Change Mendoza heading to the opposition front The Mendoza Unionwho applied to Omar De Marchi to governor. Orozco was their candidate for vice and they lost the elections against the CM ruling party that led to Alfredo Cornejo.
The diaspora was of such magnitude that even the former candidate for mayor of Orozco, Martin Bustos, abandoned them by slamming the door and filing complaints. In parallel, the year was marked by the journalistic – later judicial – investigation into the ghost cooperative Manos a la Obra, carried out by the person signing this note and resulting in a criminal file a few days later.
The municipality was transformed into chaos, if not violent, plagued by complaints and counter-complaints, “tightening”, totally paralyzed in management. In a few weeks, the former mayor was accused of fraud against the State in his form of unfaithful administration against the municipality. Daniel Orozcothe former secretary of social policies of the municipality Osvaldo OyhenartHis son-in-law Juan Pablo Pandolfiand the deputy – suspended from her bench – will be charged when the fireworks run out. Janina Ortiz. She is accused of fraud, and also of coercion in the file that involved different suspicions: having forced an employee to sleep with a former official to record it and obtain useful information for her failed cause to become mayor, and having promoted the “tightening ” for which they took that recording from two employees at gunpoint.
That is why the former official has already been charged. Patricia Rivero And your daughter Carolina Murúa. There are another dozen former officials of Orozco and Ortiz accused in the maneuver through which more than thirty million pesos were extracted from the municipality, with only one of the false cooperatives of the four suspected entities that we presented in the journalistic investigation.
It could be said that During 2023 there was no government in Las Heras, and this was reflected in all internal processes. By verifying the inconsistencies, it can be seen that stealing from the municipal state was relatively simple, until they were discovered.
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Lo Presti with former councilors of La Unión Mendocina who returned to Cambia Mendoza.
The current mayor Francisco Lo Presti decided to make public the financial, economic and patrimonial status of the municipality. The audit carried out by the Faculty of Economic Sciences consists of 295 pages of a central report and annexes that can be verified on the website of the Municipality of Las Heras. The pieces were also delivered to the Court of Accounts and it is very likely that the organization will file new criminal charges.
What follows are some examples of the total nonsense that the municipality became in the last days of Orozco, until he handed over management in December 2023.
Subsidies
The “subsidies” chapter of the audit shows several inconsistencies and some curiosities. One of the benefits that the municipality gave was to an entity called “Council of Neighborhood Entities of Las Heras”. The amount that appears in the audit is 5.95 million pesos. The head of that entity is councilor Alberto Guajardo, one of the former Orozquistas who returned to Cambia Mendoza in December.
In the file of the “Phantom Cooperative” in which they are already accused Daniel Orozco, Osvaldo Oyhenartand other officials (Janina Ortiz should soon be there), This entity benefiting from the subsidy was mentioned by a key witness in the ghost cooperative case: the former head of Economic Development of the municipality Martin Gutierrez Diele. “They instructed me to make an agreement with the Council of Neighborhood Entities of Las Heras, which at that time was chaired by Alberto Guajardo, today a councilor of the department, to make a subsidy in favor of that entity and pay favors (…) The amount of that subsidy was close to seven hundred thousand pesos but a few months later it was expanded with an addendum to one million three hundred thousand pesos, they were in six installments collected by the Council of Entities, which gave the money in cash to Osvaldo Oyhenart and thus paid the people they had committed to at the time of the campaign, and who had nothing to do with that advice. I don’t know who on the council gave the money to Osvaldo. (…) The permanent insistence on using the associations to request subsidies made me understand that it was for these same situations, to pay favors, and not for the purpose and nature of each program…” the former official told the prosecutor Flavio D’Amorethe first investigator of the Las Heras case in justice.
Gutierrez Diele He gave details of how they “squeezed” him to get these types of subsidies.
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Councilor Alberto Guajardo. Owner of an entity that received subsidies for 5.95 million pesos.
In the chapter “contributions and subsidies” that analyzed the audit of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the UNCuyo, several entities appear that received support from Orozquismo: Murga “Los Amigos”, Juventud “Una Misión”, some foundations (Carmela Fassi, Hijos del Heart of Mary) and the San Miguel Arcángel Parish.
The Civil Association was also included in the list of beneficiaries of the subsidy. “No More Hunger”, for an amount of 19.5 million pesos. The audit noted that 10 million pesos were not rendered of that package. The head of this association, Jimena Gallardo, sent a long letter to the media denying this lack of surrender. In communication with this medium, he also said that “it is an interpretation” of the journalists of the support he provided to Orozco and Ortiz in the midst of the investigation into the ghost cooperatives. They were not the only ones, just review the municipal publications during the government of both former officials to describe dozens of photos of “prizes” that they received from beneficiaries of the municipality. Among them, a distinction from “No more hunger”, which on March 20 of this year “dedicated” an inauguration to Janina Ortiz.
This association carries out intense solidarity activity in different provinces of the country. They promoted Casa Justina in El Borbollón.
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Jimena Gallardofrom “No Más Hunger”, gives a distinction to Daniel Orozcofrom whom he received subsidies for different solidarity ventures.
The murga “Los Amigos” received the subsidy in installments. In three of the surrenders they had to make, they presented invoices for expenses prior to the money received. Nobody controlled it. “There is a lack of documentary control over the renditions regarding the date of said receipt and the correlation with the purpose of the agreement. A lack of control is also evident by incorporating a note of extension of the subsidy without the signature of the person responsible for the beneficiary entity and processing said request. Failures in the control activity and assumption of responsibility for the intervention in the process” says the audit, which also observed an equine therapy agreement for 1.4 million pesos with a man named Pedro Calero. The auditors concluded that there was “Lack of documentary control. Failure to comply with applicable legislation. Sanctionable conduct towards those who intervened in the contracting and payment process without taking into account current legislation…”
All subsidies granted by the municipality and mentioned in the sample taken by the audit revealed defects: absence of signatures, documentation, renderings, or invoices that did not correspond. Even expenses that appear as subsidies but that were not assigned to any specific plan and those that could not be traced, such as the 33 million pesos that were spent on school kits in January 2023.
The lack of control was total. Debts, financial charges, unpaid advances such as travel expenses, and inconsistencies in purchases and contracts are a constant that runs through each chapter of the report. Even “pinche” (unrecorded) debt according to invoices that were presented by various suppliers.
The heritage of the municipality
The analysis of municipal assets is – according to the new authorities of the commune – the most complex chapter of the audit. today would be impossible to know exactly which fleet (including machinery) the commune has, due to deficiencies and inconsistencies in the inventories that coexisted in three simultaneous systems with different information. The audit could not be carried out in addition to any title or green card of the vehicles, some that were deregistered are still circulating, and there was also no way to establish what method was used to authorize people to drive municipal vehicles and machinery.
As a summary, the audit detected that out of 8,686 assets in the sample, 4,674 were missing. The detail regarding the capital assets of the commune shows a morbid neglect:
– Exist 4,674 assets in the sample that could not be found physically. They are not discharged.
– There are 2,143 unnumbered, unlabeled goods, or with illegible labels, or with double inventory numbers.
– There are 235 assets reported as stolen by different offices, but they appear in good condition in the system.
– Were detected 37 non-existent offices at the time of carrying out the survey. Not even the personnel consulted by the auditors could locate them. But Mayor Francisco Lo Presti said in our program “No Tenés Cara” that those “ghost” offices ordered purchases and expenses.
– A shortage of 58,000 kilos of patching material was detected that never arrived at the works for which it was intended, although it was purchased.
Conclusions
The audit of the Faculty of Economic Sciences revealed the disorder that facilitated corruption. From a simple reading of the 295 pages of the report and its annexes, it is clear that the Provincial Court of Accounts will make numerous observations, and that the lawyers of the current administration will have extra work as plaintiffs in new criminal cases. In addition, a good number of former officials of the previous cabinet will have to pay significant fines.
The good thing is that the review work was not just a documentary contrast. For each case, inconsistency, or demonstrated process error, the audit recommends a solution and “repair” tasks so that management is not only neat but legal. Although it will most likely take years to both organize the municipality and determine criminal responsibilities for the morbid looting that the municipality suffered, particularly from 2019 until Orozco and Ortiz handed over power.
