Arturo Sánchez and Enrique Méndez
La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, October 24, 2025, p. 4
The Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) yesterday presented to the Chamber of Deputies the second installment of audit reports for the 2024 public account, which includes 546 audits, in which it detected irregularities amounting to 5.1 billion pesos, of which, 89 percent correspond to states and municipalities, and the rest to the federal government; Among these, the Judiciary concentrated 49 percent.
In the presentation of the document before the Surveillance Commission, the senior auditor, David Colmenares Páramo, reported that the intervention of the ASF made it possible to recover more than one billion pesos that were already returned to the Federation Treasury.
The deputies demanded speed to complete the clarification or file the appropriate complaints for the deviations detected in public accounts from previous years.
In the run-up to the ASF ownership renewal process beginning, Colmenares – who concludes his first eight-year term in March – addressed a 15-minute message to legislators, in which he stated that “an auditor should not seek recognition or individual prominence,” and stressed that during his administration more than 28 billion pesos have been recovered for the public treasury.
After his intervention, he left the auditorium in a wheelchair, guarded by Chamber staff, and avoided answering questions from reporters about Morena’s initiative that seeks to eliminate the possibility of re-election in the ASF in 2026, to which he can aspire.
When addressing the deputies, the auditor highlighted that the subnational system of government concentrates most of the observations. He recalled that the 546 reports of this second stage, added to the 152 of the first, represent 31 percent of the 2,266 planned, whose last delivery will be in February.
He announced that in November the first artificial intelligence tool applied to auditing will be presented, designed by the agency’s own personnel, which will allow information to be processed and analyzed automatically to speed up audits.
In the session, legislators from different parliamentary groups recognized the work of the ASF, but agreed on the need to expedite the clarification of irregularities in previous public accounts. The president of the Surveillance Commission, Javier Herrera Borunda (PVEM), asked Colmenares for “speed” so that the pending cases are clarified or reported to the competent authorities.
Miguel Guevara Rodríguez (PAN) affirmed that the closure of the previous six-year term was marked by opacity and corruption, and asked to strengthen the ASF’s budget to maintain its autonomy.
Carmelo Cruz Mendoza (Morena) stated that oversight is “a real tool to combat corruption,” and that “there can be no change without honesty.”
