The former Sports Minister would have violated the hiring rules.
News Colombia.
The Attorney General’s Office presented this Monday before a magistrate of the Superior Court of Bogotá, with the function of guarantee control, the former Minister of Sports, María Isabel Urrutia Ocoró, who was charged with the crimes of contract without compliance with legal requirements and ideological falsehood in documents related to the pre-contractual procedure of the contracting process for the “National Validation System”.
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According to the statement from the Prosecutor’s Office, Decree 1622 of 2022, the Ministry of Sports had to lead the process to contract the implementation of software intended to associate the football fans’ ballot with their identity document, in order to perform background checks and ensure compliance with stadium admission restrictions.
«The investigation led by a prosecutor delegated to the Supreme Court of Justice shows that the minister had violated the contracting regulations and the parameters defined in Decree 1622, which orders that the process of choosing the contractor had to guarantee the attendance of bidders,” indicated the judicial entity.
The former official, María Isabel Urrutia, would have omitted to call a public tender, according to the Prosecutor’s Office
The investigation indicates that Urrutia Ocoró directly selected the contractor, omitting the obligation to call a public tender. Furthermore, the former official would have tried on two occasions to use intermediaries to award the contract, conditioning them to subcontract to an individual with whom she had already agreed to take over the project from the beginning.
The #Prosecution charged the former Minister of Sports, María Isabel Urrutia Ocoró, with the crimes of contract without compliance with legal requirements and ideological falsification in a document, on the occasion of the directing of a contract of 4,950 million pesos, which had as its object the…
— Colombian Prosecutor’s Office (@FiscaliaCol) November 21, 2024
According to the report, these events were warned on three occasions by her technical and legal team, who pointed out the irregularities, but the former minister apparently ignored them, continued with the process and signed an inter-administrative agreement on December 30, 2022.
«In the pre-contractual process, market studies were not carried out, nor was the process for the formation of the contract price or the value of the planned activities carried out, but a cost was set that amounted to 4,950 million pesos,” the statement indicates.
Ideological falsehood in public document
On the other hand, they indicated that endorsements were included from officials who did not participate in the structuring of the conditions or in the selection of the beneficiary of the contract, which constitutes a clear violation of the established legal procedures.
The contracted object differs significantly from that initially authorized by Decree 1622, since while the decree enabled the contract for the “Design and implementation of the national validation system”, what was finally contracted was the “analysis of the implementation of the system”.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, “the crime of falsifying a public document is related to two events. For signing the previous studies and the administrative act of justification expressing facts contrary to reality.
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