ANSES Has One Lawyer for 3,075 Trials and 36 Lawyers Have One Case
<p style="text-align: justify;">The AGN detected a disproportional distribution of labor among the 235 lawyers who represent the entity. And that’s not all; no one knows how many records are in progress: three offices offer different figures. The Administration does not liquidate rulings, the applicant determines how much money should be charged, and the appeals arrive late.</p>
Five lawyers from the National Social Security Administration (ANSES, for its acronym in Spanish) are responsible for more than 2,000 lawsuits for readjustment and mobility of salaries. One of them is responsible for 3,075 cases, while 36 other professionals have assigned a single court case. This is indicated by a report of the Auditor General's Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish) which also notes that "there are 41 lawyers in charge of 1,000 to 2,000 trials each."
According to the watchdog, “we do not see a proportional distribution of court cases” with the g 235 available lawyers. Similarly, no one knows how many lawsuits were pending as of September 2009, because three areas gave different numbers. According to the Litigation Management there were 90.505 causes, for Strategic Dashboard 313,777, and the number of trials determined by an accounting tools that contemplate the possibility of incurring a loss- at 31/12/2008 was at 230,413 cases".
Rulings
One of the recurring weaknesses identified by the audit was that the complaints that initiated the reset or disabled retirees were directly rejected by ANSeS, "stating without any analysis." This action stemmed that "administrative claims for these items inevitably end up in court" that ultimately "concluded in recognizing" what is required, or rather, the requirement to pay the defendant.
The AGN also noted that the pension entity "does not affect the settlement of rulings" even "when they were being intimidated into doing so." This means that "it lets the plaintiff” determine how much money they should collect. Despite this, ANSeS has the opportunity to challenge the assessments made by lawyers of retirees, it is in "extemporaneous" situations that the “court adopts what was presented by the plaintiff."
In most cases, the Watchdog says - the sentence was not completed before the 120 business days, as is required by Law 24,463 and other cases have waited more than a year without having received what was decided. In fact, when sentences were liquidated, "no notifications were made to the Court," which means that “the court would intime ANSeS to determine the amount that has to be paid, which usually ends up being an excess amount."
The report approved last year on data from 2006-2007 and with the field study completed in 2009, said lastly, that in relation to the sentence appeals, there isn’t an applied uniform criterion because "in some cases the Agency appeals and in similar cases they do not".