The president of the Social Insurance Institute (IPS), Isaías Fretes, announced on Monday the completion of a full audit of all the institution's properties. The objective is to gather precise data on the number of properties, rental values and tenants, in an effort to increase transparency and combat possible irregularities.
“I want to know how many properties the IPS has, where they are, how much is paid for each rental and who rents them. I want to know if that price is fair or not,” Fretes said in a press conference. He stressed that the true owners of the assets are the insured and the employers, and that this information has always been kept confidential.
Fretes cited as an example the Paraná Country Club in Hernandarias, Alto Paraná, and the more than 400,000 hectares of IPS land in the Chaco, questioning the amounts currently received. “For the rent of all these properties, we should have received 10, but we received 2,” he exemplified, without detailing the currency or the period.
To conduct the audit, Fretes appointed the general auditor of the Executive Branch, Alberto Cabrera, who presented himself with a team of five auditors. Cabrera explained that the work will include verifying how many properties are titled, the acquisition cost of each one, and performing a cost-benefit analysis between maintenance expenses and revenue generated by rentals.
“Preliminarily, we have information that there are more than 800 properties,” Cabrera said. He added that the audit will require inter-institutional cooperation with the General Registry of Property, the Government's Chief Notary Office and the Military Geographic Institute to obtain sufficient evidence.
In addition to the real estate audit, Fretes announced the elimination of 817 items from the official IPS vademecum, as part of a plan to reduce the financial deficit and cut sources of corruption. New measures related to medications are expected to be announced on Wednesday.