Mexico’s federal audit office, the Auditoría Superior de la Federación (ASF), which played a key role in uncovering major corruption scandals in the previous administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), presented the third and final part of its report on federal government expenditure for 2021 on 20 February. The results show that 2021 has been the worst year for the current government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in terms of accounting for its spending as the ASF made more than 3,000 observations, requests, and recommendations.
The document identified problems with a lack of transparency and irregularities that amounted to M$53bn (US$2.9bn) for 2021 expenditure, out of which only M$2.4bn was clarified and recovered. Most of the remaining money that has to be accounted for are federal resources that went to states and municipalities (some M$46bn). Regarding the federal government, the report found irregularities amounting to M$6.9bn. Among the worst offenders were the ministries of agriculture, health, defence, education, and environment.
Added to the two previous reports for 2021, the whole amount of irregularities detected in public spending adds up to M$64.8bn, of which the ASF has recovered only M$2.99bn. David Colmenares, the head of the ASF, which is attached to the lower chamber of deputies, highlighted that the current administration’s record regarding the number of recovery operations – which refers to public resources that are recovered by the audited entities as a result of the observations made by and actions taken by the ASF - has fallen significantly vis-à-vis previous administrations. While so far in the administration, resource recovery has totalled M$6.7bn, during the previous administration of President Peña Nieto M$51.5bn was recovered.
Colmenares also said that during the last six months, since September 2022, the ASF has reported to the federal attorney general’s office (FGR) 34 cases of missing resources that total more than M$7bn. While these cases go back to 2016, 12 of them involve the food security body (Segalmex)’s accounts in 2019 and 2020. Segalmex was created by the current government in 2019 to boost agri-food productivity in order to benefit the poorest sectors of the population. Together with the state-run bodies Diconsa, which is responsible for the distribution of basic foodstuffs at subsidised prices, and Liconsa, which distributes subsidised milk, the three entities have irregularities in their accounts that add up to M$15.3bn since 2019.
The armed forces, which have been tasked with an increasing number of operations beyond security under López Obrador, were also found to have almost M$100m to clarify, split between the defence ministry for M$37m and the navy ministry (Semar) for M$59m.
The ASF also found significant irregularities in some of the government’s priority projects, such as the Tren Maya tourist railway, which is being built by both private contractors and Sedena. The ASF found that there were irregularities for just under M$1.4bn that needed to be clarified regarding the construction of the train.
The report found that the government achieved savings of M$5.98bn during 2021, which was equivalent to only 0.08% of public spending relative to the previous year.