OFFICIAL’S MOTIVES QUESTIONED IN BAJA WATER AGENCY PROBE
Critics acknowledge corruption, but say politics play a part
Baja California’s new governor, Jaime Bonilla, says he is battling to clean up widespread corruption that for years ate away at the state’s water agency. Even Bonilla’s critics acknowledge the corruption and the sad state of the water system, which results in frequent sewage spills that foul Tijuana and San Diego beaches.
But those critics also allege the high-profile investigation, which has already led to 30 criminal complaints, is aimed at Bonilla’s political enemies. And they worry that it could be used to build up his own nest of public funds.
Attorneys for some of the companies swept up in the audit, as well as independent political analysts, suspect that Bonilla’s investigative effort may help resurrect the controversial Playas de Rosarito facility, a $470 million seawater desalination project that stalled because of a lack of consensus about the licensing terms to a private company.
Bonilla has been a key proponent of the desalination plant, strongly advocating for it on both sides of the border.
The governor insists his goal is to regulate the water utility so it can better address the sewage spills at the border and provide water and sewer services to all residents in Tijuana and Baja California. Rapid growth in the border state and over-dependence on the Rio Colorado-tijuana aqueduct has led to water scarcity in the region’s coastal zones.
In February, Bonilla pushed
forward an independent audit of the Comisión Estatal de Servicios Públicos de Tijuana or CESPT, the agency responsible for supplying the city with water and sewer services and collecting payments.
Results of the expanding audit, which has now turned into a criminal probe, allege employees of the utility colluded with local and international corporations to defraud the state out of millions of dollars in exchange for political funding for their preferred candidates.
That’s money Bonilla says should have been used to invest in infrastructure.
Everyone who spoke to the San Diego Union-tribune agreed that large companies in Baja California were given unfair breaks on their water bill — sometimes paying nothing — in exchange for political support of the prior administration under the National Action Party, or PAN. They emphasized that their concern is about Bonilla’s motivation for the audit, not the audit itself.
Coca-cola — the only company accused in the audit of water theft that has responded publicly — denied any wrongdoing, saying it treats its own water on site, as allowed under federal law.
Independent political analyst Dr. Benedicto Ruíz Vargas, a writer and researcher who studies water issues and Baja California politics, said corruption within the water agency has been a well-known fact for decades.
Water agency officials are accused of taking bribes to help big corporations conceal the amount of water they actually used, so those companies had lower bills. In one example, the Hyundai factory in south Tijuana, the company never paid anything for water or sewage services, according to auditors.
The CESPT has long been regarded as an arm of the former ruling political party, Ruíz said.
“It served to promote politicians,” said Ruíz.
Bonilla’s staunchest critics belong to the PAN and its candidates are the strongest opponents of MORENA, the political party of both the governor and nation’s president. Ruíz said Bonilla’s efforts could be seen as trying to debilitate the PAN before the next election cycle.
“This effort (the audit) has the principal intention of uncovering the network of corruption of the previous government,” said Ruíz, adding the damage in public perception could affect the PAN beyond just the 2021 election cycle.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt the (water) agency needs to be cleaned up, but if Bonilla, who is the principal enemy of the PAN is the person to do it ...” he said.
Big-name companies like Coca-cola, Fedex, Walmart, Samsung and Hyundai are among the now more than 833 companies statewide that have been implicated in the water agency’s billing irregularities and wide-ranging corruption scheme.
So far, prosecutors have filed criminal complaints in Baja California accusing 129 current and former officials of the water agency of bribery and conflict of interest, the state’s Secretary of Honesty and Public Integrity Vincenta Espinoza said Wednesday.
Officials have already collected $27.3 million of the $34.2 million they say the prior administration did not collect from companies and international corporations in Tijuana alone, she added.
Administrative directors in the agency have been identified as receiving $50,000 payments to their bank accounts on the same day as the agency approved giant multiuse development projects without an opinion about how much water the development would use, which is a requirement for approval, Espinoza said.
“Do you think that’s ethical for a company with 1,500 employees to receive a water bill for 300 pesos ($13), the same as what they would pay at home?” she asked. “It is not real or ethical to say that these are political issues. They say that politically we want to hit them, excuse us, but they are the politicians. There are more than 900 companies, so if there are three or four politicians who say we are attacking them, what about the other companies that are not in politics?”
Real estate businessman David Saúl Guakil, the former campaign coordinator of former President Enrique Peña Nieto, is the owner of at least eight multihousing buildings in Tijuana. Espinoza said clandestine pipes were installed there to conceal the true amount of water used on the property.
Guakil, who is running for the mayor of Tijuana, has denied accusations of water theft.
Some question whether Bonilla is trying to raise funds and awareness of the state’s water scarcity to secure financing for the desalination plant that was planned for Rosarito. If built, the giant reverse-osmosis facility would convert up to 100 million gallons of seawater a day.
A portion of that water would be sold to the San Diego region, according to details of the financing scheme and Otay Water District documents — a point of great contention in Mexico.
Jaime Martínez Veloz, the president of the Center of Studies for Northern Border Projects, said Bonilla negotiated the deal from both sides of the border, leaving doubt about whether Baja California would actually benefit.
“There’s plenty of shortcomings in the sale and purchasing operations, but for me the seriousness of this — the biggest concern — is that a North American official designed and clarified ... details of a development with the final goal of selling water to San Diego,” said Martínez Veloz, referring to Bonilla.
Bonilla advocated for the project when he served on the Otay Water District in Chula Vista, but he has since said the financing does not pencil out for Baja California. The project, if financed, would be developed by an international consortium in a public-private partnership with the Baja California government.
Meanwhile, some have taken their beef over the audit to the state’s legal system.
Tijuana attorney Aristeo Montaño said he has filed a claim as a precursor to a lawsuit against Baja California’s state-owned water company on behalf of his client, a U.s.-based company accused of water theft that he declined to name. His brief claims the CESPT is unconstitutionally setting its own water-fee schedule, and that investigators failed to document the past water use for the new charges.
“They told us we owed 4,400,000 pesos ($195,373) and we had three days to pay,” he said.
The company was threatened with a water shutoff that would have caused its operations to come to a grinding halt during a critical production period and it was never given a receipt or bill detailing the new charges, he said.
A spokesman for the CESPT confirmed several U.S. companies had filed claims against the agency about the retroactive charges, but the spokesman said he could not release copies of the claims to the San Diego Union-tribune because they were in the possession of Fisamex, an outside company conducting the audit.
As part of its contract with the state, Fisamex, a Sonora-based accounting firm, is collecting 20 percent of the funds recuperated during the audit — another major source of criticism about the investigation.
Montaño said he believes many companies will take a similar legal strategy when faced with either a complete shutdown that could cost more in lost revenue or paying their new water bill with the retroactive charges.
Since Bonilla is only serving a two-year gubernatorial term, he will likely avoid some of the political and public fallout when the cases make their way through the state legal system, said Montaño.
“Probably when time comes, Bonilla will be off in La Jolla having a margarita,” he said.
Several residents on both sides of the border said they are not concerned about the governor’s motivations for conducting the audit, as long it results in better management of the sewage and water-delivery systems.
“We just want the water cleaned up,” said Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina, who has been a vocal critic of the cross-border sewage spills.
“I couldn’t even begin to tell you what is happening or why. Our only focus is getting the border cleaned up — and what goes on with the bureaucratic or political fights in Mexico or Baja California is really beyond our purview,” he said.