The City Does Not Know How Much Money the Inheritance Vacancies Trails Bring In
<p>Even though what you get from the sale of property must be deposited in an account of the Ministry of Education, the Audit of the City of Buenos Aires claims that it could not identify where the proceedings, eight of the 12 deposits that were recorded in 2007, came from, more than $273.000. There is no maintenance of the houses that are auctioned.</p>
The Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish) said in a report that it could not identify eight of the 12 deposits made during 2007 in an account of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Education in regard to vacant inheritances.
According to the Watchdog, in 2007 the account, which is registered in the Banco Ciudad, is called Permanent Education Fund and aims to finance investment portfolio, it received 12 deposits from the sale of properties auctioned for $ 444,749.05. But the revenues that were not identified totaled $ 273,140.27, 61.4% of the total.
In the city, the body that decides the fate of the assets of individuals without any legitimate or testamentary successor is the Executing Inheritance Commission Vacancies (CEHV), which is under the purview of Education. The CEHV must decide whether a building, for example, can be declared a public utility, that is, if it joined the Buenos Aires heritage, or if there are bids.
The AGCBA, which adopted its report this year on 2007 data, found that the Commission failed to meet the deadline of 20 days stipulated by Law 52 of the City's "decision-making" on the fate of the vacant inheritance. "The average duration of proceedings in the 34 surveyed files was 65 days," says the report.
If a property is declared of public utility, the CEHV must notify the Attorney General for this dependence and the property in question incorporates into the heritage of the City. But the audit concluded that there is "a lack of reliability in communication and information interchange between the two organizations," and states that, of the 80 trials that reported both the Commission and the Attorney General, "the level of coincidence is seven cases, 8.75%."
By contrast, a property that is not declared public utility is disposed through the Banco Ciudad. At this point, the Watchdog says the CEHV "did not comply with the maintenance of the buildings that have been auctioned and are pending takeover by new owners." At the time of the audit, the Commission had in their custody about 120 goods in that condition. The AGCBA decided to visit some of the houses and found "buildings in a bad state, flaking masonry with moisture in the walls, cracks and lots of utility bills and correspondence on the floor."
