After five years of investigation, due to Morena’s resistance to handing over the information, the National Electoral Institute (INE) confirmed a transfer of party funds to political figures who later held public office in the Administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador… however, it forgave him.
Morena leaders or candidates were placed on the party payroll as pollsters, and earned up to 54 thousand pesos per month.
Their names were discovered during an investigation launched by the INE into the misappropriation of 22.6 million pesos from a fund that was supposed to be used for the political promotion of women, but was instead used to conduct surveys between 2017 and 2018.
Among those who pretended to be pollsters was the current Secretary of the Interior, Luisa María Alcalde, who in those years played a key role in the presidential campaign of the Tabasco native and had already been a federal deputy.
As well as the current Governors of Michoacán and Baja California, Alfredo Ramírez and Marina del Pilar Ávila, respectively; the first at that time was a candidate for local deputy and the second a candidate for federal deputy.
Each of them received monthly payments of up to 54 thousand pesos between 2017 and 2018, prior to López Obrador’s coming to power.
Suspicions
INE advisors accused the investigation into the spending of 22.6 million pesos on two surveys that Morena conducted to determine the situation of women in politics of a lack of thoroughness.
By law, parties are required to allocate 3 percent of their prerogatives per year to the training and development of women, so the INE found it “suspicious” that practically 90 percent of that amount, between 2017 and 2018, the Morena supporters allocated to surveys, so it opened two unofficial procedures.
Although the Oversight Unit notes irregularities throughout the 100 pages of the ruling approved on July 31, it concludes that most of the people involved did not respond to its notifications to find out the origin and destination of the resources, and because the time to resolve the case was running out on August 4, it declared it unfounded.
However, in both the Oversight Committee and the General Council sessions, councilors warned of a possible simulation or diversion of resources because, coincidentally, the evidence of the 7,728 surveys that were supposedly applied for two practically identical investigations was not delivered.
At the end of 2017, the “National diagnosis on knowledge of political rights, motivators and impediments to women’s political participation” was carried out, which cost 10 million 739 thousand 986 pesos.
While at the beginning of 2018 they carried out the study “Perception of development opportunities in the political sphere for women in Mexico”, for which they paid another 11 million 950 thousand 775 pesos.
However, most of the resources were allocated to pay the pollsters, since the academic Beatriz Lemus Trejo, in charge of writing the diagnoses, was paid 58 thousand pesos for the first project and 140 thousand for the second.
“She was in charge of preparing the survey questionnaire, while Morena conducted the surveys (which includes training and supervising the interviewers) and all the costs of the field work and the generation of the tables for the graphs, and was only given the concentrated information for the generation of the statistical material and provided samples of the projects,” she reported in 2020.
Omissions
On July 31, during the session of the General Council of the INE, Councillor Martín Faz warned that there were many questions about this case.
“The project lacks an exhaustive analysis by not taking into account the samples of the surveys that were conducted, which, although I requested that they be attached, were not incorporated into the project, despite constituting, from my point of view, a fundamental element for the verification of a labeled expense.
“This authority should have used much stricter review parameters. A formal verification of expenses through the presentation of contracts and invoices is not enough. It is necessary to verify that these represent a substantial contribution to this area (of women’s development),” said the councilor.
According to INE officials, the day before, in the private session of the Oversight Committee, councilor Jaime Rivera, who has been director of polling firms, questioned the cost of the polls, as the amounts were too high.
#INE #forgives #Morenas #diversion #million #pesos
