Residents of the small town of Villa Saralegui, located 130 kilometers north of the capital Santa Fe, have made headlines in recent days for starting a tax rebellion by refusing to continue paying the road tax, whose year-on-year increase has reached 430%. They have now made a Penal complaint against the community leader for abuse of authority, violation of public official duties, illicit enrichment and illicit association.
The municipality of Villa Saralegui is administered by a group of people that has varied over the past ten years, but the president of the municipal commission has always been Walter Sola. According to the complainants, since 2013 the management was characterized by “i abuse of power, opacity in the management of public money, reluctance to comply with the law and fiscal persecution of those who engage in breeding”. Similarly, they argue that Sola has increased his assets and maintained a lifestyle that does not coincide with his income, so suspected of a case of illicit enrichment.
Since he assumed the presidency of the Municipal Commission in 2013, “he ceased to promptly publish the general tax ordinance and the calculation of resources and the expenditure budget which, pursuant to art. 53 of the law on municipalities, must be published by December 15 of each year,” explained the residents of Villa Saralegui. Even if, they specified, in some years it has partially fulfilled this duty by publishing in the Official Gazette only what concerned municipal taxes and fees.
“No inhabitant of Villa Saralegui knows how and for what public money is spentIn fact, we do not even know if there is a calculation of resources and an estimate of expenses or if the Municipality spends without control, or without planning and by the mere will of the members of the Municipal Commission “, they specified.
Municipal Commissions have a legal obligation, pursuant to art 21 of the Santa Fe Municipalities Act, to publish the annual budget. Item 53 also obliges to deliver a copy of the documentation to each municipal reader who requests it, which has not happened despite repeated requests, the complainants say.
The Income and Expenditure Control Commission, on the other hand, has the task of producing and publishing a detailed account of the administrative activity carried out each month and one at the end of each year. “This publication would not have taken place and the public does not know if such minutes have been prepared in the last ten years, for now there is no publication in the provincial Official Gazette nor has any poster been seen in the Municipality indicating the publication of said report by when Walter Sola took over the presidency of the Municipal Commission”, assured the neighbors. And they added that in this case they have not received a response to requests for information made over the years.
The complaint also includes the illicit enrichment investigation for Sola and her family since, they indicate “they have increased their wealth and lead a lifestyle that would be well above their income”. In the letter they detail the purchase of two apartments in Santa Fe, two properties in San Justo and others not yet registered, a large property under construction across the street from the San Javier River, four trucks, a jet ski and ATVs. Furthermore, they draw attention to the repeated trips abroad of their children who are civil servants “and as far as is known are not part of any commercial society that could explain this accelerated increase in wealth and lifestyle,” they say.
The complaint for embezzlement of public fundsMeanwhile, it is linked to the collection of the fee for the maintenance of the 100 kilometers of rural roads in the country. “The Municipality of Villa Saralegui sets values for the general tariff of rural properties well above what is charged by the Provincial Department of Roads for the maintenance of Provincial Road 2”, highlighted the residents.
alone and the the government commission was also denounced by illicit association. “All these events which violate the most elementary principles of transparency and publicity of government acts of the democratic system and which would lead to an illicit enrichment by Walter Sola could not take place without the joint, organized and sustained participation over time of an association of people composed of the government commissions of Villa Saralegui and perhaps their employees intended to cover and facilitate the extraction of public funds in favor of the head of the community,” the complainants explained.
“The irregularity with which the Municipality of Villa Saralegui is managed is such that Etelvina Gómez is a member of the Expenditure Control Commission and as such must supervise her daughter María José Gómez who is the treasurer of the Municipality. This situation, known to all members of the governing bodies of Villa Saralegui, is in clear violation of the provisions of art. 24 of the law on provincial municipalities”, they argued.
Currently the following would be members of this illegal association: Walter Adan Sola, Jorge Alberto Aguirre, María José Gómez, Matías Jesús Gamboa, Sonia Beatriz Martínez, Alberto Daniel Koszak, Etelvina Guadalupe Gómez and Claudia Teresa Gómez.
For all these alleged crimes, the complainants asked test measures These included the urgent search of the Town Hall of Villa Saralegui in order to seize all accounting documentation, the book of minutes of the meetings of the Municipal Commissions and the book of ordinances. It also requested that a letter be sent to the Provincial Department of Roads to send all the agreements signed with the Villa Saralegui Municipality, as well as the payments and labor certifications of these agreements and the calculation of resources. They also requested that the National Migration Directorate send the list of entries and exits from the country of Walter Sola and his children in the last ten years, and that the Real Estate and Automobile Registries inform of the assets acquired by the municipal manager during the period of responsibility of Villa Saralegui, among others, and that the real estate and automobile registers report, among other things, the assets acquired by the head of the community during the period of management of Villa Saralegui.
They ask for intervention
The members of the District Six of the Sociedad Rural Argentina has asked Governor Omar Perotti “for the provincial intervention of the Municipality of Villa Saralegui for corruption, lack of transparency and physical violence installed for several years”. As they say, “only in this way will a clear signal be given by the Santa Fe government in defense of producers”. Therefore, request that within ten days the Secretariat of Municipalities and Towns report the public information access status of each of Santa Fe’s 365 Towns and Municipalities. According to the survey of ruralists, over 80% of them do not respect the minimum conditions of transparency imposed by provincial laws and above all by national legislation and international agreements. “Without making public accounts,
Source: Clarin
