By Adriaan Alsema
Copyright colombiareports
The Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a criminal investigation against four former directors of Colombia’s largest healthcare intermediary over alleged financial fraud, W Radio reported on Sunday.
The reported investigation comes two days after President Gustavo Petro accused healthcare intermediary Nueva EPS of falsifying financial records to secure increased government funding while avoiding intervention.
According to the prosecution, the Nueva EPS directors omitted to report approximately 14 million unpaid hospital invoices to avoid the intervention of the Healthcare Superintendent and keep up the appearance of a functional company.
In an address to the nation, Petro said that the unpaid hospital invoices amounted to almost $1.3 billion (COP5 trillion), which was discovered after the government decided to intervene in 2024.
In 2023, the report [on debt] from the non-audited company said 3 trillion, and when we arrived, it turned out to be 8 trillion. They had hidden 5 trillion pesos… which this government discovered when it audited Nueva EPS in April 2024. They hid this amount of money that was in invoices, as in liabilities that were owed in the accounts, but did not appear. They hid 5 trillion pesos of existing debts.
President Gustavo Petro
“If they failed to pay 5 trillion pesos, was this because they didn’t have the money or did they spend it on other things? This is the point of the investigation,” said the president.
The criminal investigation comes less than a month after the Inspector General’s Office charged Nuevo EPS’s former CO, Jose Fernando Cardona, for the misallocation of $257 thousand (COP1 billion) that was meant to be spent on care.
The ongoing investigations are the latest in a series of financial mismanagement scandals that led to the intervention of Nueva EPS and a growing healthcare crisis caused by the unpaid debts of healthcare intermediaries that have gone bankrupt since the introduction of these private companies in Colombia’s public healthcare system in the early 1990’s.
