December 23, 2022, 4:00 AM
December 23, 2022, 4:00 AM
The hiring of municipal personnel in the Mayor’s Office of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, during several administrations, It is seen as part of the political agreements to allow the governance of the mayor, but that it lends itself to corruption cases, assured opposition councilors and analysts. The most notorious cases are the irregular hiring of temporary personnel in the administration of the interim mayor Angélica Sosa, called ghost items, and the ‘charging for QR’, during the municipal administration of Jhonny Fernández.
Councilor José Alberti, from the Autonomous Community (CA), said that corruption has been present in the last municipal efforts because, due to mismanagement of Human Resources, There are people who receive salaries without going to work. One of the cases is the one that occurred due to the ‘QR charges’, where there are three former officials under investigation, including the former director of the Andrea Forfori Botanical Garden.
“Partial or consultancy contracts, for example, are a business because it opens the possibility of paying wages and salaries that do not correspond to phantom hiring. That person exists, but he does not work in the commune and his salary is collected by someone from the Mayor’s Office ”, The councilor maintained, adding that a process must be addressed to reformulate the hiring of personnel in the Municipal Government.
Alberti stressed that the changes should start by conducting competency exams or merit contests for people with the right profile to hold positions permanently.
According to the opponent, eventual hiring lends itself to extortion and blackmail because many officials are forced to hand over some percentage or part of their salary.
In the case of the Botanical Garden, according to the complaint, The contracting of the staff was for five months, but in the contract of these people it said six months and the rest had to be collected by their superior. “Everything related to the management of personnel has been very arbitrary and discretionary, which is why it has generated significant degrees of corruption,” said the opposition councilor.
Along the same lines, the mayor Juan Carlos Medrano, also from CA, said that there is no adequate control over these municipal officials who do not attend their jobs or who are forced to hand over a percentage of their salary.
“Department heads and directors should, every month, offer a report on these officials. Unfortunately it is a chain of corruption that avoids control, because they know that these people answer to some authority and that is why they are not followed up on, becoming accomplices in this corruption,” Medrano said. He affirmed that the hiring of these officials has become a business and, therefore, the Public Ministry must investigate these facts.
This Thursday the 22nd, two former employees of the Santa Cruz Mayor’s Office accused of the ‘charges for QR’ case, went before a precautionary judge, accused of the crimes of extortion, embezzlement and illicit enrichment. One was sent to jail and another received alternative measures.
In the case of “eventual contracts”, which was known last year, the former municipal secretary of Administration and Finance Sandra Velarde pleaded guilty and underwent an abbreviated process for the alleged irregular hiring of 1,205 people who received salaries during Angélica Sosa’s internship, but who never went to work. No records of card marking were found at the Mayor’s Office.
This fact, according to the administration of Johnny Fernández, caused an economic damage of Bs 25.6 million. Along with Sosa and Velarde, the former director of Human Resources Javier Cedeño was also accused. All for the crimes of improper use of influences, uneconomic conduct, breach of duties, illegal appointments, material and ideological falsehood.
The first of these cases came to light a year ago, when Valeria Rodríguez Paz denounced that her ex-husband Antonio Parada Vaca, in his position as former director of Human Resources for the Santa Cruz commune, together with other people, collected the salaries of these 800 items. illegal. “He was taking everything from me and I did not keep quiet. I investigated and found a monster, a brutally large criminal network, whose head is Angélica Sosa,” Rodríguez Paz denounced on that occasion.
In this first event, called ‘ghost items’, they recruited people to work in the Santa Cruz City Hall. They were asked for their identity card with the promise of paying them Bs 500 a month and with that identification document an account was opened in a cooperative for the interested party. The ‘contracting’ person asked for the debit card of that financial entity for the respective salary collection.
The economic damage to the municipal coffers for this case, according to projections, amounts to Bs 154 million.
The former director of Municipal Management Mario Adett Zamora indicated that “ghost items” do not exist, but They come to be called ‘political items’ because they have the name, surname and identity card number of the people they hire and these are granted to those who have an alliance with the ruling political party of the moment.
“It is not bad to be part of a political alliance to be able to better govern Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the bad thing is not to audit. This is not a business, but rather an alliance between all the political parties and it is something that they do not want to be recognized, that they are part of a political management,” said the former municipal official.
A year ago, the former interim mayor during an informative statement before the commission of prosecutors investigating the case items involved Jhonny Fernández, indicating that there was an agreement for 600 places between items and contracts between Unidad Cívica Solidaridad (UCS) and Santa Cruz Para Todos (SPT).
“From 2015 to 2020, through a political agreement signed by (former mayor) Percy Fernández with the UCS at the head of Mr. Jhonny Fernández Saucedo, my person being present at the signing of that agreement along with Juan Subirana, Loreto Moreno and the Engineer Percy Fernandez, UCS had a large number of contract items. I clarify that there were more than 600 people between items and contracts,” according to the statement. The lists were of people proposed by this political store that made a governance agreement with the engineer Percy Fernández and the Acronym SPT”, according to the ex-authority in her statement.
Last Thursday, before the hearing of former secretary Velarde began, lawyer Jerjes Justiniano, legal representative of the former interim mayor, indicated that Velarde’s lawyer, Fernando Orellana, has employment ties with the head of the City Hall’s Legal Department, Erwin Tapia.
“We have discovered that the lawyer Fernando Orellana had been a partner of Dr. Erwin Tapia. They jointly sign memorials in co-sponsorship processes, So this explains the affinity in an agreement in which she (Velarde) pleads guilty,” Justiniano explained.
He also assured that Orellana’s son was recently hired by the Municipal Government. “This means that, in exchange for municipal charges, we are reaching agreements with the defendants,” he questioned.
For his part, Tapia denied the accusations made by the former interim mayor’s defense and stated “that in his desperation” Justiniano tried to write a novel because an agreement was never made with the lawyer Fernando Orellana, denying that he has a law firm.
“I have signed some co-sponsorships (with Fernando Orellana) within processes, which is normal within my profession and I have worked independently all my life,” said Tapia, adding that Orellana’s son was withdrawn in November of this year.
