According to the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Jorge Fernando Perdomo Torres, the institution has made a decision to bring charges for “acuerdos restrictivos de la competencia” (agreements which restrict the competition) against 16 private individuals belonging to a criminal association in charge of defrauding the State through the bidding processes. They allegedly participated in the private security “carousel” which was discovered thanks to a parallel investigation conducted by the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce and the Office of the Attorney General.
The decision derives from the administrative procedures conducted in 2011 by the Superintendence which enable it to demonstrate that several companies from the security and surveillance sector, apparently competitors among themselves, would have reached (collusive) agreements in order to assure that one of these companies might benefit from the bidding processes in which they participated by affecting bidders who were not involved in this agreement and also State. For this reason, prices for hired services were increasing and therefore causing an imbalance in public spending.
The Industry and Commerce Superintendent, Pablo Felipe Robledo, stated that charges were brought against 8 companies belonging to this sector: Centinel, Cobasec, Starcoop, Expertos, Gaurdianes, Sejarpi, Insevig and Security Management Group which allegedly colluded in 252 contracts performed with 149 public institutions between 2010 and 2012”.
After the Superintendence filed a complaint, the Office of the Attorney General conducted an investigation regarding these facts and was able to establish that collusive agreements (Cartel) were allegedly reached during the contracting processes in public institutions at municipal, regional and national level, such as the Secretary´s Office for Social Integration (Secretaría de Integración Social de Bogotá), Comptrollers´ Office in Bogotá, regional SENA in Cundinamarca and Governance Office of Meta, facts that disrupted the contracting processes in these institutions.
Regarding this subject, Deputy Assistant Attorney General stated that “it was possible to stablished that this alleged cartel has not only an illegal content for the function of the Superintendence but also has or can have a legal connotation. In other words, criminal offenses were committed with this alleged cartel or could have been committed”.
He also added that the offense that might be charged is provided in article 410 from the Criminal Code and denominated as “acuerdos restrictivos de la competencia” (agreements which restrict the competition) and is punished with 6 to 12 years under preventive detention”.
According to the hypothesis of the Office of the Attorney General, the security companies which appeared as competitors in contracting processes would have previously agreed the terms and the way they would participate so that one of them would benefit from the awarding of contracts. These facts would be demonstrated, among others, through the consistency of the observations and objections proposed in the technical specification sheet that were oriented to benefit one of the companies that belonged to the agreement.