Lilian Hernandez Osorio
The newspaper La Jornada
Monday, July 22, 2024, p. 6
For registering proof of events that did not take place at the designated location; omitting documentation proving contracted expenses, such as painting walls and billboards; late reporting of the cancellation of a meeting on the agenda of public events; not submitting bank statements, or adjusting accounting policies that do not match the original ones, the National Electoral Institute (INE) is set to approve this Monday million-dollar economic sanctions to political parties and candidates.
After almost two months of the Institute’s Oversight Unit (UTF) conducting an exhaustive review of the campaign expense reports of federal and local public officials, submitted on June 1, today the fines established in more than 643 rulings against federal and local candidates from all political forces will be approved.
Among other irregularities detected by the INE are the presentation of receipts that lack signatures, failure to present bank transfer receipts, as well as the failure to report the percentage of financing distribution, details of the distribution of expenses prorated among the campaigns, late reporting of the notice of opening of bank accounts for the management of campaign resources, in addition to omissions in the registration of expenses on social networks in the campaign account.
The irregularities attributed to each political institute arose within the framework of the review of the income and campaign expense reports of the political parties corresponding to the 2023-2024 electoral process.
establishes the opinion on the positions for president, senators and deputies.
The UTF reviewed 6,478 reports of 1,309 federal candidates from political parties or coalitions and two independent candidates for the presidency, which reported a total of 3,791,853,285 pesos in income and 3,810,483,912 pesos, which shows that the parties spent 18.6 million pesos more than the income they received.
These irregularities therefore result in non-compliance with the obligation to have adequate control over the accountability of the resources available to the obligated subjects in accordance with the provisions of the electoral regulations.
According to the opinions that will be approved today, the formal faults
They are those that constitute a risk or danger to a single legal asset, without there being a direct affectation, so there are some sanctions that are classified as mild
while others were serious
and based on this classification the amounts of the economic sanctions were determined.
This INE unit thoroughly reviewed more than 33,000 campaign income and expenditure reports for federal and local processes, in which 21,027 candidates from parties and coalitions, as well as 122 independent candidates, were registered.
During the campaign period, UTF staff monitored billboards and propaganda placed in public spaces, print and electronic media, generating 252,435 records that were evaluated and compared with the records provided by the parties, in order to find irregularities or omissions.
During the review process of the candidate reports, the reported income totaling 7,547 million pesos and expenses of 7,401 million pesos were analyzed in a total of 541,028 operations in the Comprehensive Oversight System, of which 135,368 are from the federal electoral process and 405,660 from the local level.
