For the third time, the Court of Accounts of Mendoza penalizes the owner of the entity that administers the "Fund for Transformation and Development", an initiative aimed at farmers, agribusiness and mining projects.

The public official is Jorge Luis Tieppo and the penalty, of $ 1,000, was for "negligence in the care of public funds", as a result of "deficiencies" identified in the charging of loans over ten years ago to two companies, Santa Gracia SRL and Magma Corp SA, for $670,000.

Between July 1995 and March 1998, the Fund awarded two credits to the firm Santa Gracia totaling $470,000. The agreement had a mortgage guarantee and, due to the lack of payment of the firm, in February 2002 the execution of a property valued at $72,000, for the second loan was initiated. But in 2004 Santa Gracia managed to stop the auction after proposing a new payment agreement in which they paid about $25,000.

Already in April 2005, the debtor company offered to formulate the repayment plan again, but the entity commanded by Tieppo considered that this extension was "inconvenient", recalls the Court, adding that, however, "from that date no actions by the Administrator in relation to the collection of credit arise.”

Also, while evidence of the managements made by the Administrator to recover the money were provided, the Watchdog claims that were filed in "dates after observation and do not justify the delay elapsed."

Magna Corp, meanwhile, received a loan for $200,000 in 1998, paid only nine installments -up to March 2000- and in April 2001 was presented in competition. In August 2003, the company offered a property of 23 hectares as payment and in October 2004, a month before the auction, proposed to restructure its debt to "a significant reduction of fines." The Administrator of the Fund agreed to Magma’s orders and suspended the auction "without justification and despite repeated breaches of the policyholder," says the Court ruling.

However, the new agreement was also violated by the firm, which only paid $25,000 in October 2004 and $20,000 in May 2005. A month later, Magma asked to replace the debt, that year they offered a new refinancing.

For the Watchdog, "poor collection management and considerable delay is warned" in the work of the agency that administers the Fund for transformation: "After seven years of failure (the loan was granted in July 1998), only in July 2005 the Administrator denounced the nonpayment of the agreement and requested the resumption of the process of execution of sentence," explains the sentence.

But in its research the Court could not determine if credit is maintained in the initial conditions or if the acquittals were granted and, in addition, the Administrator did not explain why those information were not listed in the records. In fact, the Watchdog argues that "it is unknown if the principal obligation was replaced by another."

"The omission in the care of state funds, due to the lack of internal control is the responsibility attributable to the Director" of the Administrator, completed the Court, referring to the official Tieppo.