The Legal Areas of the Post Office Don’t Have Procedural Manuals and Are Handled With "Verbal Cues"
<p style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">According to a report from the AGN, there are offices working on a trial database that has erroneous and insufficient information and, that do not show the maturity and the dates of the hearings, there is no way to control the progress of a case. There are lawyers in-house who represent the agency that have not been formally hired.</span></p> <div> </div>
The two legal areas of the Argentine Postal Service (CORASA, for its acronym in Spanish) are handled without any procedure manuals and the guidelines for overall development are "verbal cues." This was stated in a report by the Auditor General's Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), which makes it clear that only one office defined "certain premises" for lawsuits.
The report, approved last year on 2007 data, ensures that CORASA’s two legal services, the Directorate of Legal Affairs and the Legal, Labor, and Union Management, are working on a trial database that sheds "erroneous and insufficient information." In addition, the system "does not show maturity and hearing dates" that would allow them to keep track of deadlines and cases.
Sequentially, the audit found that there are lawyers in the provinces that are assigned cases on behalf of the agency but "have no formal contract" to link them to CORASA, "overlapping in some areas, with hired lawyers."
The "principles of transparency" on the mechanisms of hiring professionals were not completed because "there is no evidence, publication, or invitations to potential bidders," says the report.
The AGN added that CORASA’s legal service did not inform the Treasury's Office (PTN, for its acronym in Spanish), which maintains an updated Register of Federal Judgments, on the cases which they are responsible for, even though, according to Nº1116 / 00 Decree and Resolution No. 2/2000 PTN is forced to do so.
National Post Office and Telegraph Company SA
The Argentine Post Office also received compensation requirements for former members of the National Post and Telegraph Company SA (ENCOTESA) who should have received, according to Decree No. 214, "14% of shares" of the former agency, before it was privatized. It was from the Employee Stock Ownership Program (PPP), which enables employees or members of the company "subject to privatize" to acquire part or all of the capital stock.
According to the AGN, the PPP was never implemented, even after the company went back under the State’s orbit. According to the report, "in 1991 the Ministry of Labor would intervene in any proceeding in which the PPP was adopted" and in 1998, a year after the ENCOTESA privatization, it empowered the Ministry of Communications to make the "necessary actions to implement the transfer" of shares.
The audit team noted that effectively demands on the applicability of PPP were presented, but there is "procedural confusion as to the dependence of the Federal Government acting as defendant or as a third party scheduled for trial (as a witness)."
This report of the AGN is Resolution 213, it was issued in November of last year and from the moment technicians completed the fieldwork and the College of Auditors gave its approval, 874 days passed, i.e. two years and almost five months, it was the most delayed work to be approved throughout the previous year.