por ALBERTO AZCARATE VARELA
THE BAJA POST/NEWSROOM
Baja California State Government has located 994 companies, audited and ruled as “aguachicoleras” (water thieves), whose amounts of debt for unaccounted consumption or connection rights, are 2.324 billion pesos, only 756 million pesos have been paid in recent months, according to the secretary of Honesty and Public Function (SHFP), Vicenta Espinosa Martínez, reporting to the governor Jaime Bonilla Valdez, about the actions that his agency has executed, together with the audits carried out by the private firm Fisamex, which it recognized as efficient and for which a commission of 20 percent of the “recovered” is paid.
Espinosa responded to a citizen question, during the live broadcast, clarifying that such percentage is less than 5% than what the previous administration had agreed with the same auditor, which she hired but did not comply with because the results obtained failed to evidence the “drain” into which they converted CESPT (water operation of Tijuana). She said: -“Not only is Fisamex paid a lower percentage than the previous auditor, it was agreed that it will be paid once the debtor’s or debtor’s payment enters the collection boxes (of the water and drainage operating agencies), as is the case of the Tijuana State Commission of Public Services (CESPT). Previously, Manuel García, director of the aforementioned firm, had reported in detail the complexity of his investigations with more than a hundred subordinates working simultaneously in Mexicali, Ensenada, Tecate, Playas de Rosarito and Tijuana.
There are 994 companies ruled in Baja California, which owe 2,3 billion pesos, of which 756 million 606 thousand pesos have been recovered, with 31 criminal complaints filed, as well as 39 investigation files, in where 137 employees or officials of the water operating agency are involved. Among the anomalies in the investigation folders, was referred to the concept of “inadequate legal defense, lack of follow-up or abandonment of legal files”, which were incurred by legal directors and lawyers from the water and drainage operating agencies; as an agreement signed by the past administration, whose legal follow-up “is lost” two days after the end of the government term of Francisco Arturo “Kiko” Vega de Lamadrid, committing the resources of this administration for an amount of more than 100 million pesos .
