The mayor of Colón, Rolando Alex Lee, voluntarily went to the General Electoral Prosecutor’s Office (FGE) this Monday morning to respond to an investigation against him for alleged use of public funds in politics and mobilization expenses.
The FGE had summoned him for February 14, but Lee did not attend. The prosecutor in charge of Manuel Del Cid’s case was waiting for him this Monday, February 21, after he managed to notify him, in a second attempt to appear.
“We are approaching the Electoral Prosecutor’s Office to render ex officio investigative statements, together with my defense attorney, Víctor Almengor, and we have come to fulfill our duty of the one who does not owe it and is not afraid of it. We are going to give the Prosecutor’s Office the opportunity to investigate, that this is your job, and we know that we have not incurred in any electoral crime and we make ourselves available to the Electoral Prosecutor’s Office,” he said.
Lee reiterated that he will give his full support to the Electoral Prosecutor’s Office, “because there is no electoral crime here.”
On January 21, when the FGE announced that it had opened an investigation, the mayor of Colon said that he would go “voluntarily.” A day earlier he had confessed that the local authorities use the mobilization funds (in his case $3,500 a month) to walk in the communities and re-elect themselves to their positions.
Lee receives $3,500 a month in transportation expenses, while 13 of the 15 representatives of his district receive $5,000 in that category, according to figures from the Comptroller General of the Republic.
At the time, the mayor of Colón declared: “the mobilization expenses are used, because here everyone walks in their communities. If not, they won’t win again and the mayor who doesn’t walk, the representative who doesn’t walk, is left losing in his corregimiento”. Then, a reporter asked him if he was saying that the funds are used to get elected again. His response was: “that is the interpretation that you give it, that mobilization expense we see as a work tool to serve our communities”.
According to the Comptroller, the mobilization expenses for the mayors and representatives of the country cost $1 million 26 thousand a month, or $12.3 million a year.
As a result of this scandal, on January 24 the Comptroller’s Office announced that since January 20 it had ordered the suspension of mobilization expenses and began an investigation into their use. His progress is unknown.
The FGB has requested reports from the Comptroller and the Treasury Department of the Municipality of Colón on the amounts received by the mayor in mobilization expenses and their breakdown.
The Election Code It establishes that the assets and resources of the State must not be used for the benefit or against certain candidates or political parties.
