The Executive Branch formalized the request for a financial audit of the Punta Catalina Thermoelectric Power Plant (CTPC) through an application filed with the Chamber of Accounts yesterday morning.
The legal consultant of the Executive Power, Antoliano Peralta, delivered the letter, which is signed by President Luis Abinader, and specifies that the mega-work be investigated until December 31, 2021. This after the president instructed last Sunday to the new Chamber of Accounts a financial audit of the plant, so that the Dominican people can know every detail of what was invested in it.
The request of the Executive responds to the line assumed by the government, as detailed in the document, in the sense of complying with and enforcing the principles of transparency, publicity and legality, provided for in article 138 of the Constitution.
According to what the Head of State expresses in the document, the Government is receiving the results of the technical audit carried out by the US firm Sargent & Lundy, on Punta Catalina, awarded through a prior public bidding process.
Responding to questions from the press about the dismissal of the former administrator of the CTPC Serafín Canario, through decree 679-21, and if there is a new administrator, Antoliano Peralta explained that this information will be revealed by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which has control of the plant theme.
Citizen Participation requests a forensic audit of Punta Catalina
The coordinator of Citizen Participation, Leidy Blanco García, valued as positive the approach of the Executive Branch to the Chamber of Accounts to request a financial audit of Punta Catalina, however, she also considered it necessary to carry out a forensic audit.
Blanco García, who is convinced that one cannot speak of the trust for the Punta Catalina Thermoelectric Power Plant without really knowing what the cost of the work is, said that the plant has not yet been audited.
“A financial audit is very limited, so what the Dominican people have to know is the real cost of the work and the corruption damage that will be evidenced in a forensic audit and not in a financial audit,” said the representative. of the civic organism, minutes before the arrival of Antoliano Peralta to the Chamber of Accounts and after that to hold a meeting there.
The forensic audit is a specialized procedure which integrates legal, accounting and financial knowledge, it is carried out with the objective of identifying fraud.
Questions about the CT PC resurfaced as a result of a trust agreement that the Executive Branch submitted to the National Congress, considered by some sectors to be the object of privatization of the work. The plant was inaugurated on July 29, 2020, by then President Danilo Medina, for an amount of US$2,454 million.
The Law that works the Executive will be new
The legal consultant Antoliano Peralta explained that the legislative project that the Executive Branch is working on to regulate public trusts is not the initiative “that regulates the business assets of the State, public trusts and creates the National Center for Companies and Public Trusts (Cenefip) ”, which appeared in the Chamber of Deputies on January 12 and still appears in the archives of that wing of Congress without any variation in its content. He said there is an error when they say that it is a project “to regulate public trusts.”
