The Supreme Court annulled the purchase of Lexus cars – La Discusión 2024-02-28 15:45:59

After a long controversy, the Supreme Court announced this Thursday that it will annul the purchase of 22 Lexus brand cars for the sum of 1,253 million pesos, to renew the fleet occupied by the members of the highest court.

In a public statement, the Supreme Court stressed that “the Judiciary is autonomous in the execution of its budget in the administrative and management sphere.”

He also indicated that “the Supreme Court makes its decisions regarding the acquisition of goods and services, weighing and analyzing the merits of the information available to it at the time of adopting them.”

For this reason, he added, “this Court is not oblivious to the contingency and context of the events that concern the country. The decision to renew the institutional vehicles assigned to the Supreme Court in 2014 is based on technical and safety background, preferring environmental sustainability standards.”

“Those, and not others, are the considerations that were taken into account to adopt at the time the approval of the renewal of the vehicles,” he pointed out while explaining that “although the Budget Law for the year 2024 did not contemplate the aforementioned renewal, the truth is that the Budget Directorate (Dipres) – dependent on the Ministry of Finance – committed on November 9 of last year, before the Special Joint Budget Commission, the authorization of additional funds from the initial balance of fund for needs expressed by the Judiciary”, which included the “renewal of institutional vehicles”.

“The request for application of the initial balance was formalized through official letter 3DF number 538 of January 26, 2024 addressed to the Budget Directorate, there has been no response”, thus, “taking into account the considerations presented with the detailed account of the director of the Administrative Corporation of the Judiciary, it was decided to annul the agreement adopted for the purchase of 22 Toyota Lexus model ES300H automobiles, which was made by the majority of the members who participated in that decision.”