The General Administration of Customs (AGA) will cease to be an administrative unit of the Tax Administration Service (SAT) and will become a decentralized body of the Ministry of Finance, according to a decree enlisted by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The organizational change would give financial and management autonomy to the AGA, which will now report directly to the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury and will have the same rank as the SAT; the measure is intended to speed up the “clean-up” of corruption in the country’s customs, federal government sources confirmed to Political Animal.
Read more | Alleged bribes of more than a billion, shell companies and ties to the drug: corruption in customs
Currently, the AGA is one of the 12 central administrative units subordinate to the SAT Headquarters, headed by Raquel Buenrostro.
The sources pointed out that the fight against corruption in customs has been hindered by the fact that the AGA does not have autonomy in the removal and admission of personnel, nor to file complaints of irregularities (this power belongs to another area of the SAT, the General Administration of Evaluation, to which the AGA must give a citation). The AGA also has no authority to implement improvements in customs infrastructure and equipment.
The decision to separate the AGA from the SAT was made at the end of May, at a meeting at the National Palace headed by President López Obrador and in which Finance Secretary Arturo Herrera participated; the head of the SAT, Raquel Buenrostro; the Customs Administrator, Horacio Duarte, and the Legal Advisor of the Presidency, Julio Scherer. Defense and Navy Secretaries Luis Cresencio Sandoval and Rafael Ojeda, respectively, also participated.
The meeting was to evaluate the collection in the first quarter of the year, the results of the seizures at the points of entry into the country, and the process of incorporating elements of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) into customs on the northern border, as the president had instructed earlier that month.
President López Obrador was informed by Sandoval that the integration of military profiles had stalled in the human resources area of the SAT: the General Administration of Resources and Services, which is in charge of the payroll of the entire institution, including that of the AGA and customs. This administration is led by Paloma Aguilar, a former member of the Presidential Assistantship.
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Lopez Obrador questioned how the incorporation of the military into customs could be expedited, and initially proposed adding the AGA to the Sedena, according to the sources consulted.
Secretary Herrera replied that the AGA’s collection vocation should be taken care of, and proposed, instead, that the administration be separated from the SAT, becoming another decentralized body of the Finance Secretariat, through a presidential decree, a proposal that received the approval of Councilor Scherer.
With this change, Herrera explained, the customs authority would have its own budget, control over its payroll, as well as powers to evaluate profiles and file criminal complaints.
In addition, the AGA could freely dispose of the Customs Trust, in which there is a portfolio of projects for the improvement of infrastructure and technological equipment of the country’s access points, and which the SAT has not executed.
With the change, the AGA would change its name and have its own address, according to sources with access to the proposed decree.
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