The Public Ministry of Colombia and the Comptroller General of the Republic investigate what happened to thousands of assets that disappeared after being seized by law enforcement.
Authorities opened the investigation after President Gustavo Petro warned that the state-owned company that manages the seized assets, the Sociedad de Bienes Especiales (SAE), is possibly involved in “one of the worst acts of corruption in history. “
The new CEO of SAE, Daniel Rojas, showed that on paper there are thousands of assets registered in his corporate.
Rojas added that SAE’s asset stock lacks data on the state and estimated market of the real estate in the company’s custody.
Finally, the assets in the custody of the CAS would be illegally occupied.
The alleged chaos prompted Rojas to call for investigations, the leader of the SAE last month.
The firm has been criticized in the past for allegedly mismanaging FARC assets that passed through former guerrillas following a peace deal in 2016.
Andrés Ávila (Image: Twitter)
In a press release, former SAE CEO Andres Avila said Monday that the discrepancy stems from a database of seized assets the company won from the now-defunct National Narcotics Directorate (DNE) in 2014.
Former President Juan Manuel Santos dissolved the DNE after detecting that the promoter firm seized assets from politicians loyal to former President Álvaro Uribe instead of promoting them.
Former DNE director Carlos Albornoz was sentenced to 19 years in prison last year for turning the DNE into an incredibly beloved piñata.
After the dismantling of the DNE, the SAE is the entity in order to administer the assets seized through the forces of order, adding those retained through the dismantled agency.
According to Ávila, the DNE SAE with an Excel sheet with 19,819 properties, 1,700 shops and 12,000 cars allegedly in the custody of the agency.
The former head of SAE said his company was only able to locate 5,000 cars in the DNE database.
The Excel sheet also lacked data that would allow verification of genuinely owned homes and businesses allegedly owned by the DNE, Avila said.
Avila said nothing about the other alleged irregularities and did not explain why he never said anything about the fictitious assets until his successor sounded the alarm.
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