In the City of Buenos Aires there is a law designed to regulate transactions made by political parties during election campaigns. This is the 268, which was enacted in 1999. 

Under this rule, and to facilitate the control of the use of funds, the groups participating in an election are required to open a special account with the City Bank, which should be recorded all operations performed, including contributions both public and private, and expenses used in the actual campaign.

However, the Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish), an agency under the same law is competent to monitor the performance of parties, identified a number of breaches of this obligation in all campaigns that it had to since it was enacted supervising standard 14 years ago.

In that sense, the last legislative elections a year ago was no exception, so much so that of the 24 parties that participated in the last elections, 14 operations performed outside its special accounts.

Citizens Go Vote

In late June 2013, and by decree, it was summoned to the electorate of the City of Buenos Aires to choose 30 legislators and 10 alternates, in an election that took place on October 27 and agreed with the vote of parliamentary turnover that occurred at the national level.

To participate in this day 24 parties and alliances registered, of which one did not reache the minimum to participate in the election (Popular Convergence Porteña, list 905).

With respect to how the parties financed their campaigns, the aforementioned Law 268 provides in Article 9, a contribution of $ 1.70 Buenos Aires State for each category and for each enumerated person. Given that the pattern of the city is 2,554,374 voters, and only legislators were elected, the public budget to contribute to the electoral process totaled $ 4,342,435.80.

That amount was divided among the parties at the rate of $ 1.70 per vote received in the previous election, while the lists had no immediate antecedents, would receive the same amount of money the last group that had gone on past voting.

And what was said, already campaigning, actions that made both public contributions and private, should be recorded in the special account that each party should open in the parent company of Banco Ciudad, under the provisions of Article 16 Act 268.

Continuing the process, 10 days before the election each party must submit to the Audit of Buenos Aires a report with the income and expenses of your campaign, detailing origin and destination of the funds, plus a projection of the transactions ahead of the vote itself.

A month after the civics day, the parties will have to submit another report, in this case with the final figures of its campaign.

The Role of the Audit

In addition to receiving these reports, the Audit of the City has a period of three months –counting from the election day- to develop and publicize its findings on the performance of political parties.

That survey was approved in February of this year and, according to the auditors, while working some limitations on the scope of their duties arose. This is the case of coincidence with the national election; the fact is that two different electoral processes (with expense reports in two different jurisdictions) occur; it generated a "difficult to establish a precise line between the two simultaneous campaigns."

At the same time, the non-use of the special bank account by 14 of the 24 games led the watchdog to find an alternative to get the necessary data. So it was that data reported by providers own political groups were sought, but as this participation is not mandatory, the closing date of the report only 34.7% of those invited had responded to requests for cooperation.

The Accounts

Regarding special accounts, the audit report noted that "the operation mode" of the Banco Ciudad generated, first, that the openings were made in some cases when the campaign had already begun.

To this we must add that it could not identify what were the accounts that had been opened specifically for the campaign and that it was to receive commissions to political parties due to the movement of funds.

Also in relation to Banco Ciudad, the report says that the company "has no particular figure stipulated in the Electoral Campaign Single Account, which should (include) for obtaining and managing a unique and distinctive modality to meet its peremptory objectives and time.”

Another remarkable feature is that the AGCBA for the opening of special accounts matches the official certification of the Superior Electoral Tribunal is required. So far, so good. The issue is that this recognition is a posteriori in the formalization of the lists of candidates, which is to say less than a month before the elections: "Like any causal relationship, if not resolved in practice this formality with adequate advance, openness and the same use of the Special Account Field it cannot meet their real objective mechanism of control and transparency, becoming the events to any more formal requirement, "says the report.

The Parties

At this point it is necessary to clarify that none of the three most important political forces in the Buenos Aires spectrum operations performed outside its special bank account.

In detail, the total expenditure of Union PRO (list 503) amounted to $ 3,085,813, an amount made up of a public contribution of $ 1,485,813 and a private contribution of $ 1.6 million.
The UNEN (502 List) alliance, meanwhile, was given $ 508,280, which almost entirely came from the Buenos Aires State, as the party declared private contributions for only 2000 pesos.

While the Front for Victory had total expenditures of $ 1,388,184 ($ 903,378 contributions from public and private for $ 485,000).

But on the side of the forces that did not meet the law 268, the Citizen Aluvión party did not deposit in their account private contributions they received. The observation is relevant, since the amount in question-about $ 206 mil- accounted for 86.3% of all the money spent on the campaign group 2013 ($ 238,516).

Something similar happened with the Sum Democratic Left Party (904 List), which received $ 107,881 in private contributions, but before opening special bank account, so that these funds never went through the required inspections.

Also, there was a list that did not declare expenses over $ 100,000. It was the Constitutional UNIR Nationalist Party, according to the report, only received public pledges of just $ 31,038.

Total Numbers

In the elections in the City of Buenos Aires in 2013, the public contribution for all parties amounted to $ 4,261,578; private contributions totaled $ 3,252,659 and general expenses were $ 7,429,880.

In addition, there were 14 groups that managed funds outside their special accounts, with comments such as private contributions made in cash or personal credit cards, or failure to submit bank statements. Together, these operations totaled $ 635,555.

For details, see the table below.