The report approved this year by the General Audit’s Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish) argues that the audits conducted by the Directorate General of Customs to companies with household customs procedures in 2009 "were negligible”.

These companies, which include Volkswagen with an annual import of US $1,394,775,204 in 2009, Toyota – US $1,274,280,472, Ford and Siemens, among others, are defined under the category of Large Customs Operators. It is those companies that move important volumes for imports and exports, which have their own factories in a "home office or factory." They are companies that sometimes act as Customs.

Still, it is noted that "there is no specific legislation that set the parameters to define the profile of the taxpayer as a large customs operator."

An article published in 2005 by Page 12 newspaper mentions the same inadequate controls: "Under this scenario, established in 1998, the goods enter the port without being checked and are transferred directly to the company, where a tiny portion of the products are inspected, because the method is based on "fiscal reliability" of firms and the ex-post audits to be undertaken by the State on the documentation of the transactions. However, it was found that the head of Customs, Ricardo Echegaray, since the system was created, there were almost no audits, so about 5000 million dollars of foreign trade (imports and exports) was at the mercy of "goodwill" of the companies."

The AGN’s report, approved this year on data from 2009, says that during the period analyzed Customs controlled only 1 in a thousand of the imports. Meanwhile, the audited area had claimed that they had "limited human resources."

Not only is there little control, but also the audit found that "these audits were not made in conjunction with the General Tax Directorate (DGI, for its acronym in Spanish)."

Furthermore, "the Department of Large Operators did not implement a control dashboard to perform centralized controls", a situation that AGN already observed in an approved report of 2005. There is also no evidence that the area effected control tasks of physical inventories in custom factories and home addresses.

The Traffic Light Decides

The Audit explained that "the intensity of the monitoring procedures for the release of the goods depends on a process of" selectivity "defined through different channels (green, orange or red)." Control procedures are in an increasing scale depending on whether the type of channel (less intensive green, greater rigor and control in red).

The AGN found that percentages of operations selectivity, according to the channels, "do not show a uniform behavior." Which means, for example that Ford had almost 70% of its operations with lower control and Toyota had to submit 25% of their operations to the most stringent controls.