RIC leases office to company linked to former congressman Armando Escribá – 2024-07-23 11:31:56

The Legal Department and two other offices of the Cadastral Information Registry (RIC) have been operating since the end of 2023 in a property that was leased to Montañas Nacionales, a corporation linked to former congressman Oscar Armando Escribá Morales.

The institution justifies the rental by the overcrowding in three other locations in the capital and claims that they were not aware of the connection between Escribá and the landlord.

With the leasing of the annex offices for the RIC, the public supply of Montañas Nacionales is reactivated, which declined in 2018 when the Public Ministry and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), indicated that the then deputy of Citizen Action, elected by the Líder party, had incurred in extortion and fraud, in the Construction and Corruption case.

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An appeals court confirmed the closure of the case against Escribá and the Constitutional Court validated the decision last March.

According to CICIG, when Escribá was an official of the Ministry of Communications, projects worth Q194 million were awarded to companies linked to Montañas Nacionales and Señalamiento Vial de Centroamérica, SA

The lease is not the only link between the RIC and Escribá. No less than five people linked to the former deputy – two former legal representatives, the nephew, one of the brothers and the sister-in-law – have provided professional services to the RIC during the last five years.

One of them, Lionel Polanco Mejía, has put himself forward as a candidate to join the nomination committee for the Supreme Court of Justice, a link with Escribá, who is mentioned as a possible financier or operator in the election of courts.

Express selection

The story of the lease began in November 2023, when RIC managers realized they needed more space for the legal department and the Public Registry Coordination. The request was signed by the head of the RIC administrative management section, Juan Pablo Guzmán Leal, and the head of the Administrative Department, Elmer Gudiel Valle, on November 21, and the lease contract for the move was signed on the 29th of that same month. Thus, in one week, the overcrowding problem raised by Valle and Guzmán had been resolved.

Valle was acquitted of a corruption scheme that was uncovered by the Comptroller General’s Office in the 2015 audit and that reached the then executive director of the RIC, Emilia Guadalupe Ayuso, and that resulted in a criminal complaint against him for the purchase of computer equipment valued at Q6.2 million without planning or justification.

Along with Ayuso, Juan Pablo Guzmán Leal, who was then serving as head of the RIC Treasury, was also denounced. Valle and Guzmán are key actors in the leasing with the company linked to Escribá.

Gilmar Bobadilla, head of Communications at RIC, points out that the legislation allows leasing without the need for a tender and warns that they obtained nine quotes from possible options for the move, but only two were willing to do business with the State. The search began, according to the communicator, much earlier than the documents published in Guatecompras show.

In the documents related to the contest, dated November 24, Valle states that “a place with a better price and structure for leasing was not found.”
In January 2024, the RIC signed a contract for Q881,978 with Montañas Nacionales to lease the 1,018.6-meter property for the entire year.

The links

When CICIG revealed the case against Escribá, it was revealed that Luis Alberto Beltetón Carías, one of the founders of Montañas Nacionales and president of the Board of Directors, was the partner of one of the sisters, Brenda Izela Escribá Morales.

Beltetón was the legal representative of Montañas Nacionales until 2021. His predecessor was Édgar Lionel Polanco Mejía, who participated as a candidate to represent the College of Lawyers and Notaries (CANG) in the nominating committee for the Supreme Court of Justice.

While waiting for the votes to move forward, at the Majadas forum, Polanco confirmed that he was the legal representative of Montañas Nacionales, because that is what “his friend”, deputy Armando Escribá, asked him to do. His role did not require him to go to the office or do any specific activity at the construction company, he recalled.

“I hardly did any negotiations with them,” he said, and left the deserted tent of List 7, which did not win any seats in the commissions.

Polanco held the legal management of the cadastral process at the RIC from 2019 to 2022, according to public information. During his tenure, he was the boss of Alfredo Beltetón Escribá, nephew of the former deputy and son of Brenda Escribá and Luis Beltetón, the former representative of Montañas Nacionales.

From 2017 to 2018, Alfredo Beltetón was an inventory technician at the RIC and from January to June 2019 he was hired as a research technician for alternative registry sources. From July onwards, he obtained a contract as a solicitor at the National Forest Institute (Inab). In 2019, Brenda Escribá and her son Alfredo ran as candidates for the FCN-Nación party to lead the municipal corporation of San Miguel Petapa.

Polanco and Escribá’s nephew are not the only ones linked to the RIC. Until January 2021, the legal representative of Montañas Nacionales was Rudy Jonathan Pimentel Ramírez, a computer science graduate hired to provide technical services to the RIC since 2019. Since then, he has been awarded Q293,000, according to the Guatecompras website.

Alfredo Escribá Morales, brother of the former deputy, is Manager of Programs and Projects at the RIC and engineer Alejandra Constanza Soberanis, wife of Estuardo Escribá, also works for that institution as a Professional for the Development and/or Updating of Technical Administrative Instruments.

Estuardo, another brother of the former deputy, provides professional services at the National Registry of Persons (Renap), as does the current legal representative of Montañas Nacionales, Brenda Lucrecia Quiñónez Flores, who signed the contract for the lease of the RIC’s annex offices.