The General Reporter for Colombia conducted an analysis of the National Narcotics Directorate (DNE, for its acronym in Spanish) in disintegration. In September 2011 the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, "ordered the suppression and liquidation of the Entity for leaking information and corruption by failing to conduct effective checks, and this combined with improper administration of the goods and not retaining documentation appropriately". However, things seem to be recurring.

One of the most alarming situations detected in the financial statements prepared by the liquidation administration. The Reporter described them as "inefficient" because "they don’t provide confidence". This statement is based on the auditors finding that "failures in information systems, accounting data that is false, as well as a lack of integration between the areas," among other issues.

Amid the observations, the watchdog found that the administration of San Andres bought a piece of land to build a Center for Rehabilitation for Juvenile Offenders. The acquisition not only was considered "unnecessary" because the entity already has a lot of land, even larger than this one that were delivered by DNE,  but because "725 million Colombian pesos were paid when the year before the seller had bought it for 69 million." This created "a cost overrun, patrimonial damage, and detriment to the State," stated the report.

It is important to remember that many of the goods that were under the purview of the Directorate were seized in drug related cases. In this regard, we detected a Hardware Store that was seized and placed under the orbit of the DGE, "is still administered by the same person to whom the store was seized from” and a hotel resort, "Camping Morgan Bay, is directed by an external person so it is commercially exploited without the entity receiving any economic resources for it".

Goods And More Goods

The general objectives of the Directorate in liquidation include "maintain the positioning of the Colombian state as a leader against the world’s drug problem" and "generate objective, timely, and comparable information on drugs and crime." However, it showed "weaknesses "in the management, planning, organization, control, and execution of the settlement's own activities.

An example of the weaknesses in planning can be seen in "the steps to determine the transitional administration of the goods until they are owned by the Ministry of Justice, and how it is yet to be settled." In fact, the entity "failed to comply with the process of final delivery of weapons and ammunition to the Ministry, nor surrendered to Culture Artworks".

To analyze the transfer of property from the Directorate to the Ministry, the Comptroller assessed the information "dumped in a spreadsheet" and noted that "in five months only 5.92% of records were reviewed." At this rate, the projection indicates that the settlement process "would take about seven years" which would be "an onerous process for the state." In economic terms the "Directorate did not consolidate a plan costing solution, so the real value cannot be found”.

There is a company that caught the attention of the federal watchdog. It was Almagrario SA with several contracts that were held since 2007 by more than 6,000 million Colombian pesos and whose object is "the deposit, custody, maintenance, and storage of vehicles and motorcycles that are left available to the DNE". In several cases it was noted that "the amount that the firm pays well exceeds the value of the property in keeping." But that's not all, "in the contracts preserving the property is not guaranteed." The Comptroller said that "the administration is ineffective, inefficient, wasteful, and generates the loss of the resources invested."

Information

The auditors found that the FARO system containing information on Narcotics, "ceased to be operational since 2011 due to a technical failure that prevents updates". Therefore "the employees are forced to save the data on their personal computers, therefore, there is no computer security uniform criteria." To this we must add that "inventories were incomplete and lacked data." This, in the opinion of the Comptroller, "goes against the principle of reliability."