Our legal work and experience paid off in an important case in the Court of Accounts of the Republic (CCR), where Torres Legal obtained a favorable sentence for a client. With this, Torres Legal obtains legal success in a Public Law case.

The state agency carried out an audit examination against an important institution of the State of El Salvador, which process took more than a year and a half. Recently, our client received a sentence from one of the Chambers of Accounts of the CCR, where all type of responsibility for our client was removed.

The Public Administration Department of Torres Legal, integrated by our partner, Oscar Giralt, and our attorney, Fátima Rivera, accompanied the client to advise on the technical-legal part of the process and based on the data previously provided.

“We have been able to successfully defend the actions of our client in a Judgment of Accounts generated by a special audit examination executed by the Court of Accounts of the Republic, related to the first decisions that the Salvadoran State took as a consequence of the Pandemic by COVID-19 and that benefited more than one million Salvadorans, where all type of responsibility for our represented party vanished”, affirmed Oscar Giralt.

Our Public Administration Department was able to refute all the arguments of the CCR audit team. Giralt explained that the auditors pointed out alleged deficiencies in the administrative procedures of several State portfolios and issued an opinion on how the operation was carried out. But such deficiencies did not exist, as it was proven that all administrative acts issued by the authorities represented by Giralt had legal and technical support.

“The Chamber agrees with us that the audit team exceeded its functions, since they recorded as findings situations that were totally outside the law, so we invoked the legal aphorism “nullum crimen nulla poena sine lege” (there is no crime and there is no penalty without law) to check such situation. The audit team intended that, at the time when the events occurred, which was at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration officials made decisions in the way they as auditors considered that they should be taken, this being an overreach of their legal competence,” explained Giralt.

The accompaniment of the Public Administration Department of Torres Legal was able to prove to the Chamber that the audit team exercises a posterior external control of the public administration, and in its role as comptroller, it cannot exercise “co-administration” actions, since the one who decides what to do at a given moment in history, is the Administration through the issuance of administrative acts, and not an audit team of the Court of Accounts.

The decision of the Chamber of Accounts remains firm after the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic did not appeal the resolution, since the same Public Prosecutor’s Office supports some of the arguments that Torres Legal argued against in the defense of the Reparos.

Torres Legal provides specialized, preventive and corrective legal advice to public institutions regarding administrative acts issued in accordance with its internal regulations and Salvadoran laws. Contact us through our social networks or visit our offices located at Calle Cuscatlán, #4312, Colonia Escalón, San Salvador, El Salvador.

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