Driven by all political parties and unanimously approved, the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies approved reforms in oversight matters, granting new powers to the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) to audit strategic infrastructure projects classified as 'national security' and with information of a 'reserved' or 'confidential' nature. The approved bill, which received 390 votes and was sent to the Senate, also includes that the ASF will have the power to audit resources in real time, without waiting for the legal time to review the corresponding public account and to review previous exercises, as well as to investigate, on its own initiative or by complaint, serious administrative offenses. Another novelty in the reforms designed by the legislators themselves is that they also open space for 'citizen initiatives' for audits in the same year of the exercise of the resources for which they demand transparency. 'The ASF will no longer be a white elephant, it will have teeth and there will be no more corruption, with an audit that will be the scourge of the corrupt who do damage to this country,' stated Ricardo Mejía, from the PT, president of the Transparency and Anti-Corruption Commission, at the tribune. The initiative includes reforms to the Federal Law of Fiscalization and Accountability of Public Funds, the General Law of Governmental Accounting, the Fiscal Coordination Law, in terms of effectiveness, interinstitutional cooperation, legality and technological innovation in superior audit. In the midst of high absenteeism in the Legislative Palace, the deputies lamented that they are still waiting for the package of reforms to the National Anti-Corruption System, which has been promised by Morena and will come from the National Palace. After the controversy generated by the opacity in works such as the Maya Train, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Interoceanic Corridor, the airports of Palenque, Chiapas; Chetumal and Tulum, Quintana Roo, classified in an official decree by former President López Obrador as 'national security' and 'confidential information', the ASF's 'locks' are removed, celebrated the PAN deputy, Héctor Saúl Téllez. In Article 17 of the Federal Law of Fiscalization and Accountability of Public Funds, it is established that 'the ASF will have access to information that legal provisions consider as of a 'reserved' or 'confidential' nature, when it is directly related to the capture, collection, administration, handling, custody, exercise, application of federal revenues and expenditures and public debt'. 'With this change, there will be no 'locks' for the ASF and it will have the power to open any file,' explained the PAN legislator. In Article 22, it is ordered that 'the ASF may request and review, on a case-by-case and specific basis, information and documentation from previous exercises to that of the public account under review, without this implying, for all legal effects, the reopening of the public account of the exercise to which the requested information belongs'. In Article 66Bis, it is established for the first time that 'the ASF will make available to the citizen all communication channels and technical instruments, in all their modalities, that facilitate the presentation of the corresponding complaints'. 'This is what I like most,' exclaimed MC deputy Irais Reyes. It also specifies that 'the ASF may, at any time, either on its own initiative or derived from a complaint, investigate alleged serious administrative offenses, under the terms of the General Law of Administrative Responsibilities, regardless of those derived from the fiscalization process and the fiscal exercise in question'. In Article 41, 'legal certainty' is guaranteed to the audited entity, by establishing that 'the ASF must issue a ruling within 120 business days, counted from its receipt, on the responses issued by the audited entities, determining their non-settlement, settlement, file or conclusion, as appropriate'.
