UBA received $58 million from a state-owned company for an audit that wasn't conducted

The Government of Javier Milei has compelling evidence showing irregularities in the contracts that the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) signed with various organizations during the Kirchnerist administration of Alberto Fernández.

Although currently the Administrative Litigation Justice prevents auditing UBA's expenses, the National General Audit Office (SIGEN), led by Miguel Blanco, managed to examine the agreements the university signed with ministries and state companies.

One of these agreements, signed in 2023 between Trenes Argentinos Operaciones (SOFSE) and the UBA's Faculty of Economic Sciences, is the focus of a report exposing various irregularities.

According to the contract, the UBA was to "collaborate" with SOFSE's internal audit, a task for which it received a payment of $58,529,618. However, SIGEN concluded that "there is no concrete evidence that the work was carried out."

This investigation is part of the decision by the Government of Javier Milei to audit UBA's expenses through SIGEN. However, the university rejects this transparency measure, arguing that internal control corresponds to the National Audit Office (AGN), which is controlled by its political allies.

The irregularities

The analysis of the agreement conducted by Milei's administration exposed a series of serious irregularities:

• SOFSE already had its own Internal Audit Unit, composed of 11 agents, which cast doubt on the need to hire external assistance.
• There is no documentation detailing how many people were assigned by the UBA, nor their professional backgrounds.
• The agreement established the formation of a work team with a supervisor, project leader, coordinators, experts, and collaborators, but there are no records of its integration.
• The UBA did not present a work plan, therefore, SIGEN can't determine what specific tasks were carried out.
• There is no evidence of document analysis, risk identification, project monitoring, or collaboration in audit reports, which were the agreed responsibilities.

SIGEN was blunt in its report: "There is no evidence of the work specifically carried out by the UBA." Additionally, the overlap of functions between SOFSE's internal audit and the university raises doubts about what tasks were actually executed by each entity.

"This situation indicates that the Faculty has not presented a schedule of hours and products executed at the time of issuing each of the reports submitted to SOFSE, which did not allow determining what the UAI executed and what the Faculty did, as the schedules were identical and with the total hours set in the UAI Task Plans for the years 2023 and 2024. Consequently, there is no evidence of the work specifically carried out by the UBA," states the document accessed by the TN media outlet.

The report also highlights that the activities reported by the Faculty in its reports are practically identical to those of the SOFSE Internal Audit Unit Plan.

The agreement was valid for one year and stipulated the presentation of a work plan and four progress reports. However, the absence of documentation on the professionals involved and the results obtained prevents determining whether the payment received was commensurate with the services provided.

They don't want to be audited

Last year, amid the tension over the audits, the UBA filed a precautionary measure in court to prevent SIGEN from proceeding with the review of its budgets and expenses.

One of the most sensitive points of the conflict lies in a SIGEN document that would demonstrate that the UBA did not account for 89% of the funds received between 2020 and 2022 within the framework of university programs like FUNDAR, aimed at financing projects that promote national and regional development.

This amounts to about $8 billion without justification of destination, in addition to another $500 million allocated to infrastructure between 2015 and 2019, whose use has also not been clarified.