By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s comptroller Carlos Hernan Rodriguez wants, over the next four years, to recover one trillion pesos ($209 million) of state resources stolen through organized corruption, he said on Monday.
Corruption is a major public concern in Colombia, where around half the population lives in poverty and remote areas make do without roads, schools and hospitals.
The comptroller general’s office has recovered 350 billion pesos in Rodriguez’s first six months leading the agency, he said, greater than the 200 billion pesos it recovered in the four years prior to his taking office in September.
Rodriguez is ramping up the use of embargoes and taking more precautionary measures to avoid public funds being diverted away from contracts for infrastructure, healthcare, and feeding children in poor areas.
“I hope to reach a trillion pesos in recovered resources,” Rodriguez told Reuters in an interview, adding that sum represents “a minimal part” of what is stolen.
Estimating how much money is lost to corruption each year is difficult, Rodriguez said, recognizing that discoveries of theft, bribery and fraud increased in recent years due to greater efforts by both the comptroller’s office and wider society.
A 2017 estimate from the comptroller’s office placed the sum of money lost to corruption at up to 50 trillion pesos annually, more than double the value of a 20 trillion peso tax reform approved by Congress at the end of last year.
Colombia is ranked 91 out of 180 countries in advocacy group Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
Rodriguez’s office has identified 1,721 projects, so-called “white elephants” that are unfinished or in the process of being abandoned, and which are worth some 14 trillion pesos, he said.
“Corruption begins to take shape from the planning stages,” he said.
($1 = 4,780.89 Colombian pesos)
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Oliver Griffin)
