Settlements, leaks, damage to private property, overpayments or payments for works that were not executed are some of the findings made by the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) during the review of the financial management of the resources destined to the expansion of Line 12 of the capital Metro, from Mixcoac to Observatory.
“There is evidence of significant settlements of up to 20.7 centimeters that have affected various buildings that are located on the line of the tunnel that goes from the Rosa Roja light to the Valentín Campa station in the Minas de Cristo, Primera Victoria and Cove neighborhoods, which have fissures and cracks in walls and structural elements, which have had to be propped up for security by the Government of Mexico City, so the works are suspended in the section of kilometer 30 + 295 to 30 + 514 from October 19, 2020 without having been accredited to date the formalization of the corresponding act “, pointed out the ASF in the third installment of the audit to the Public Account 2020.
In total, the review found eight outcomes. In one, no irregularities were found and two cases were solved by the audited entity before the issuance of the report. The remaining five generated two promotions of sanctioning administrative responsibility and three statements of observations.
The Audit also detected that seven payments were made, for 3 million 55 thousand pesos, in a supervision contract without the execution of the works that should have been supervised until October 2021 – when the verification visit was carried out – since said contract “is without progress in its execution and in the process of early termination”.
Likewise, an additional 604 thousand pesos were paid in the excavation of a part of the tunnel, because in the end a different machinery was used than the one that had been established in the analysis of the unit price of the contest.
Read: L12 expected to reopen by the end of 2022
Among the results, payments of 468 thousand pesos were also found in works that do not meet the required quality, specifically in the rainwater collection system in underground works, due to the fact that runoff was observed in the coating.
In total, the Government of Mexico City must clarify 4 million 128 thousand pesos.
The extension of Line 12
The works to expand the so-called “Golden Line” began in March 2016, without being completed to date.
This is the extension of the line from Mixcoac to Observatory: a tunnel of 4.6 kilometers in length and 30 meters deep that would allow the habilitation of two additional stations (Álvaro Obregón and Valentín Campa), as well as the Observatory terminal, where an area would be conditioned where it would be possible to store 12 trains.
On the findings of the ASF, the head of government, Claudia Sheinbaum, said that these are only observations and that the fact that the Audit says so does not mean that there are acts of corruption.
Even though they are in the law, he considered that these reports should not be made public.
“They are observations, I do not even think that the Audit should disseminate them because they are observations and there is a period of time where the institutions have (sic) to be able to solve all the observations that at some point could be detected by the Audit,” he said at a press conference on Monday.
“That is very important for citizens to know, they are observations, it does not have to do with actions or mismanagement or much less, but it can simply be a purely minor administrative matter and that has to be solved by the area.”
The CDMX, Sheinbaum stressed, is one of the entities that had the least observations from the Audit.
According to a graph he presented, the amount to be clarified by the capital of the country corresponds to 0.1% of the total.
Congratulations!
The #CDMX is one of the states with the best results in the control of the #CuentaPública2020, with only 0.1% of its audited budget to be clarified. pic.twitter.com/KNeuMbrwRd
— Luz Elena González Escobar (@LuzElena_GE) February 21, 2022
“When there is a government based on honesty, then it is not understood why the observations are presented in this way; in any case, they would have to wait for the review procedure to end before it was made public,” Sheinbaum insisted.
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