“Do you want to search?” asked Deputy Brenda Buchiniz (Cumplir-La Libertad Avanza) and stretched out her arm with the printed note from RIO NEGRO, which contains the list of officials who presented their sworn assets declaration from December 2023 to May 2024. Marcelo Bermúdez (PRO) was found quickly. “Not even all of us deputies are there, it seems important to me that we have this debate”added the legislator, author of the project to reform law 5 of the province, which has been in force for 66 years.
The governor, the vice, ministers, legislators and judges must present, before assuming office, a declaration of assets that has secret character. The procedure does not contemplate any form of public access to this information, nor the obligation to carry out the same mechanism when leaving the position. It is so old that it is kept in a closed, sealed and signed envelope.
“Anyone could have put a piece of candy paper inside the envelope.”, stated deputy Claudio Domínguez (MPN) in the discussion they had yesterday in the Constitutional Affairs commission. The law allows it to be opened if there is a court order, although it is almost never used in investigations: The prosecutor’s office is rarely interested in analyzing the assets of civil servants and, surprisingly, when it does, it resorts to the records of the AFIP.
In 2016 RIO NEGRO published that no representative had presented it. «They know, it is a public official’s duty. “We cannot be behind everyone so that they deliver things to you.”answered the then Government clerk, who receives the documentation and performs the envelope ceremony.
The data obtained by this newspaper was the result of a request for access to public information promoted by lawyer Federico Egea and his colleague Angélica Acosta Meza: From 1991 to date, 128 people with public responsibility fulfilled their obligation.
«Society is demanding it from us, we have realized in this last election, above all, that people are tired of privileges, that they are tired of this caste protection that they understand that politicians exercised or exercised until now, I hope that we can change it,” said Buchiniz.
He pointed out that both Egea and Acosta Meza must be invited to the commission to make your contribution.
Deputy Francisco Lépore (Avanzar) indicated that “in general terms” he agreed, and considered that it would be necessary to ask opinion to the Provincial Court of Accounts.
The first vice president of the Legislature, Zulma Reina (Community), expressed her doubts about the proposal. Although she mentioned that she had presented her returns in 1995, 2007, 2011 and the last one in 2023 (it appears in the list), she stated: “I don’t know if I’m interested in making the patent number public.” He said the same thing about his home. “Although almost everyone knows where you live,” was answered. He implied that the civil service had deteriorated its income: “When I entered I had much more capital than when I left the public administration.”
“They are two different things: one thing is to make an address known, but here what we are trying to do is not make an address known, but to investigate the assets of a public official,” Domínguez said. He added: “we decided to make our lives public,” in relation to what are the “rules of the game” when a person runs for an election.
Legislator Andrés Blanco (PTS-FIT) said that “it is a joke” if they open their envelope, because of the few goods they will find. He emphasized that the project does not resolve the issue of corruption, because there are figures such as front men. He acknowledged that it is “a step.”
“What now prohibits someone from investigating the assets of any of us if there is a complaint?” said deputy Alberto Bruno (We Make Neuquén). He stressed: “there is nothing that prohibits it, that is what justice is for, there is a database in the AFIP, we can all be investigated.”
He stressed that there is “an absolute excess in terms of discrediting ourselves, the political class.” “I want to tell you that for there to be corruption in the political class, there must mainly be a private person who is willing to generate that corruption, because otherwise there would not be any type of corruption,” mentioned.
Bermúdez pointed out that to go to a session “won’t it be necessary to have a sworn declaration presented? Can one legislate without having respected the legislation that specifically concerns one?” He warned that to read the statements one must take into account “inflation and devaluation,” and gave as an example that if one of them had bought a house in Mari Menuco in 2000 for 28,000 pesos, today its price is 150 million pesos and that later “you have to go out and explain it.”
The president of the commission, Ernesto Novoa (Community), promised to continue working on the issue. His name is one of those missing.
