Page Seven Digital
After Customs officials were apprehended for diverting undocumented cars and taken to a workshop to be dismantled to sell the auto parts, the Bolivian National Customs ordered this Friday the intervention of the Oruro management, in order to carry out the corresponding investigations.
“We are intervening the entire management of Oruro and we have seven buildings where customs personnel work, including the Interior Customs Office and its three extensions, two houses of the Customs Immediate Reaction Group (GRIA) that one serves as a home and another as an office. Personnel from La Paz are being intervened,” said the president of Customs, Karina Serrudo.
He explained that the people who exercise their positions in the Oruro Regional Customs module will stop doing so while the intervention lasts.
Regarding the former officials who were apprehended by the Police, it was reported that they are nine people who have already been removed from their positions so that they can face their defense. They will be prosecuted summarily.
“They will be prosecuted summarily so that they will never hold public office again if they are found guilty. We are not going to allow any official to be protected for any illicit act. Customs has become a plaintiff against these officials for the crimes of: theft of customs pledge, the crime of embezzlement and the crime of improper use of influence”, he stated at a press conference.
You can also read: Customs officials are arrested for diversion of undocumented cars
He mentioned that, after the known facts, they have had access to the confiscation records of the two vehicles that were to be transferred to the customs facilities, in which the delivery of the seized merchandise was not fulfilled, for which a summary is being initiated.
In order to prevent more acts of corruption, he indicated that this year both in La Paz and Oruro body cameras will be installed for the personnel of the CRIAs and the Customs Inspection Points (PIAs). In this way, everything they are doing during the operations will be observed online, from the time they leave until they return to customs facilities.
On Thursday, authorities from the Prosecutor’s Office and the Police captured nine people involved in an alleged dismantling of vehicles seized by GRIA personnel, dependent on the Oruro Regional Customs, before their corresponding registration and control.
According to the Ministry of Government, the officials were found in flagrante delicto, inside the private workshop where they presumably dismantled the vehicles seized by Customs. It was even observed that in some cases these undocumented vehicles were offered through social networks.
