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    President Rodrigo Chaves / Photo via Casa Presidencial.
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Published on Thursday, September
26, 2024
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff On
Wednesday, during a press conference
at the Presidential House,
in San José, President Rodrigo
Chaves-Robles addressed the
Prosecutor's Office's inquiry into an
alleged Social Security
potential fraud. Chaves
stated the Prosecutor's Office's
process for arresting Marta
Esquivel-Rodriguez, the president of
Social Security, was wrong and that
Attorney General Carlo Díaz-Sánchez
knew it was a mistake. "It is rather
simple for him to order the arrest of
a woman who has willingly consented to
go before the Judicial Investigation
Organization to face the
investigation," he said. He
complained about the judicial
procedure in taking Esquivel from the
Judicial Investigation Organization
offices in Perez Zeledon
Canton
to the organization facilities in downtown San José,
in a police van with a separate
compartment in the back used to
transport criminals, "as if she were a
member of a drug trafficking
organization was a cowardly move,"
Chaves added. The
president was emphatic in his claim
that the Prosecutor's Office actions
were like putting on a show planned to
use force to spark a scandal. "Is it
necessary to arrest someone like
that?," Chaves questioned. The
president urged Attorney General Carlo
Díaz to justify why this case was
"investigated so rapidly publicly."
Why were these eight persons arrested
so fast (referring to the president of
Social Security and members of the
Board) without first conducting an
investigation and gathering convincing
evidence?," he noted.
Costa Rica's president challenged the judicial authorities by questioning if the next move would be raiding his house. The case began when the Social Security Board of Directors annulled one agreement for choosing contractors for managing at least 138 public clinics known as Ebais. The Deputy Prosecutor's Office for Probity, Transparency, and Anti-Corruption (FAPTA) investigation found that after allegedly annulling that agreement, the defendants used their board positions to create a new deal to hire cooperatives that would benefit from that second contract. The suspects allegedly changed the agreement despite being aware of a previous study that determined that the cooperatives that would be hired would result in an annual increase of more than $23.9 million per year in the current cost that Social Security pays to the private companies in charge of the Ebais managing. The prosecution is also investigating the shift in the new businesses' contractual lengths, as the Costa Rica Public Procurement Law says that contracts cannot last longer than four years, while the new agreement was signed for ten years. If the new contract is fulfilled within ten years, the estimated cost of the alleged fraud against Social Security would be approximately $239 million.
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