By Alberto Pascó-Font
The crime of collusion can be simple or aggravated. The first has a maximum sentence of 6 years, the second 15 years. The difference between the two is whether the collusion has caused economic damage to the State. The good pro of IIRSA North It was granted in May 2005, the maximum date on which the collusion would have materialized (which by definition should have been before the good agreement). The IIRSA North investigation began in 2019. If the collusion were simple, the crime would already have prescribed. The Prosecutor’s Office has to insist that there is damage to the State. To this end, it has prepared an accounting expertise based on conclusion 6 of the subsequent control report No. 038-2007-CG/OAS, prepared by the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR).
As the IIRSA North route (Paita-Tarapoto-Yurimaguas) allows reducing the transportation costs of legal products from the Central Huallaga area, the United States Government signed a donation agreement to promote this concession. With these resources, the North American firm Chemonics International was hired to support the dissemination of the project, traffic, environmental and financial studies. It was this firm that estimated the maximum values that the Peruvian Government had to pay for the construction of the work (the Annual Payment for Works or PAO) and for the operation and maintenance (the Annual Payment for Operation and Maintenance or PAMO).
According to the CGR, the PAMO estimated by the Chemonics firm was excessive and that allowed the winning bidder to charge more than it owed, harming the State. While the PAMO determined by Chemonics amounts to US$15.3 million, the CGR estimated a PAMO of US$12.9 million, that is, a difference of US$2.4 million.
The difference between the estimate from Chemonics and the CGR is mainly explained by the items of periodic, routine and emergency maintenance, all of which has an impact on other items, such as engineering services, operation and maintenance costs and the profit associated with the previous calculation. For the Comptroller’s Office, maintenance expenses should have been lower.
The accounting expertise presented by the Prosecutor’s Office assumes that the CGR estimates are correct and is limited to verifying how much has been paid for PAMO over the years since the concession began, and compares it with what, according to the CGR, should have been paid for PAMO. If the CGR estimates were incorrect, then this expertise would have no meaning.
As demonstrated below, the CGR report is wrong.
Chemonics used the World Bank’s HDM III (Highway Design and Maintenance Standards Model), which allows comparing different options for building or rehabilitating a highway. To do this, it used information from 2004 and early 2005. One of the aspects that Chemonics evaluated was the state of the roads BEFORE their concession. To do this, Chemonics used the International Roughness Index (IRI), which is a standard indicator for measuring the surface regularity of a road and was adopted by the World Bank in 1986.
For the Olmos–Corral Quemado section, Chemonics estimated a baseline IRI of 8.5 m/km. The Comptroller’s Office hired a consultant (service location contract No. 550-2005) who estimated, in 2006, an IRI of 2.5 m/km. This consultant made his estimate AFTER the road was concessioned when it was in full rehabilitation. In doing so, it ignored the necessary tune-up investments included in the Chemonics HDM-III model and eliminated the periodic maintenance contractually provided for in the PAMO.
The Comptroller’s consultant did not carry out an exhaustive review of the Chemonics files and the MTC technical reports that appear in the “White Paper” of the process. Given this lack of rigor and the fact that he carried out his analysis with parameters AFTER the concession was granted, he concludes, incorrectly, that the necessary maintenance flows are lower than what is really necessary. Consequently, it presents a “potential damage” that is not consistent with reality, but rather arises from a theoretical comparison of the state of the road between two different moments in time, one before the concession and another after it, when the road has already been intervened and its IRI has been reduced thanks to said intervention.
In conclusion, the CGR’s estimates of the alleged damage caused to the State by an alleged error in the amount of the PAMO are wrong. The CGR had to estimate the indicators of the road in its original state—before granting the concession—when it showed significant deterioration. Instead, it used the enhanced values after the rebuild started. By not having or requesting the “pre-concession” data, the situation of the already rehabilitated road was evaluated, which leads it to conclude, incorrectly, that lower routine, periodic and emergency maintenance costs are required. Consequently, the exercise of accounting expertise lacks value because it is based on an erroneous quantification of the alleged damage.
