Officials responsible for supervising a construction company hired by the Banco Nacional (BN), allegedly allowed cost overruns and kept private business with the company owner.
In 2014, the bank audit department began investigating three senior officials after having detected deposits of 23 million colones allegedly made in the company’s accounts or to the owner, and the contractor could have paid 8.5 million colones to two of the employees.
The audit report concluded that this relation with the supplier could generate a conflict of interests that would compromise officials’ objectivity to monitor contract compliance.
The internal audit also revealed a possible excess payment of 30 million colones in the remodeling contract of bank offices.
The officials are still working in the bank. However, their tasks are unrelated to purchases or to contracts supervision. While the company is still a supplier to the bank, a spokeperson said that no law prevents the business from presenting offers for services contracts.
Since April 2015, the prosecution office is investigating whether the suspects committed embezzlement or not.
Source: La Nación.