Prior State Administration in the Red, Accounts Missing

(Chilpancingo, AN 20 April) The state controller, Lázaro Mazón Alonso, made public yesterday that the administration of former governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo left a debt of over $3 billion pesos in the departments of health and education, and in the state water authority. The former finance undersecretary of the Zeferino government’s Department of Health (SAA), Magaly Salinas Serna, has not answered formal inquiries, nor has she complied with the legal requirements for handing over records and accounts to the incoming administration. Moreover, the health department does not even have an accounting for the first three months of 2011. It was her department that was accused of defalcations of more than $150 million pesos just a few weeks earlier, and of purchasing a helicopter with public health funds, only to hand it over to the ex-governor for his personal use. It was at the records department of SSA that a suspicious arson occurred shortly before the end of the Zeferino regime. The natural presumption was that the public money was stolen by corrupt officials, that the arson was designed to destroy evidence, and that the indebtedness was incurred to cover up the disappearance of operating funds.

The controller announced his intention to begin administrative proceedings to determine what happened to all the public money, and who should be held responsible for the irregularities.

Auditors began a similar review of the state education department (SEG) and also of the state water authority (Capaseg). The indebtedness in SEG alone is more than $1 billion pesos.