Colombia’s Comptroller: There are 1,600 properties in domain extinction that no one manages

With the arrival of the Petro Government, the properties owned by the Special Assets Society (SAE) have been essential for the Executive’s purpose of handing them over to social organizations.

In the midst of this panorama, the Comptroller General of the Republic found 1,638 properties in forfeiture processes that are not managed by anyone and that should be in the hands of this Society.

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At this time, the control entity determines the cadastral value of each one of them, among which are farms, lots, houses, warehouses, apartments and even a shopping center located in Bogotá.

“More than lost assets, they are assets that were not delivered for administration. And this lack of administration is not the responsibility of the SAE but of the control entities, which from 2012 to 2014 did not carry out the proper investigations into the shortages in the property inventory,” the agency highlighted.

The SAE currently manages a total of 32,873 properties.

The Directorate of Analysis and Immediate Reaction (Diari) of the Comptroller’s Office reviewed the situation of some 25,000 properties and to date has analyzed some 9,000, concluding that: there are 6,634 properties that have a precautionary measure of extinction of domain, 2,465 of which the Prosecutor’s Office has declared unfounded and have been returned to their owners and, finally, 1,638 who are orphans (they are with a precautionary measure of extinction or suspension of dispositive power, the SAE does not have them and their status is unknown).

“Something is happening with justice, when out of 100 properties that are seized, 35 are returned. Doesn’t the imposition of precautionary measures have sufficient investigative rigor? And it is a risk because the Government spends to manage these properties and in the end it is time to return them,” warns the control entity.

This is without taking into account the possible demands of those affected by the imposition of precautionary measures.

Of the certificates of tradition and freedom reviewed with a precautionary measure from 2014 onwards, there have been 264 properties destined for the purposes of agrarian reform, that is, their ownership was extinguished and they were delivered to entities such as the Incoder (Colombian Institute of Rural Development).

With information from Bloomberg Línea