The Government of Casanare must pay a fine of close to $27 million pesos, as an environmental sanction for having removed material from the river without having an Environmental License, from the Ariporo river in 2011.
The foregoing is derived from an anonymous complaint filed before Corporinoquia at that time, where it was made clear that several dump trucks were observed, some of them owned by the Casanare Governor’s Office, extracting material from the bed of the Ariporo river in the village of Santa Ana del municipality of Hato Corozal, generating environmental deterioration to the tributary.
The environmental corporation carried out the respective investigation, and on October 14, 2016 issued a resolution declaring the Government environmentally responsible and fined it for the sum of TWENTY-SIX MILLION EIGHT HUNDRED EIGHT THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY-SEVEN PESOS ($26,808,557).
The Government of Casanare sued the aforementioned sanctioning Resolution, and on November 29, 2021, the Second Administrative Court of Yopal denied the claims of the lawsuit, agreeing with Corporinoquia. However, the Governor’s Office appealed the decision of the aforementioned judicial office, and on May 4, 2023, the Casanare Administrative Court ratified the decision of the Second Administrative Court, leaving the Corporinoquia Resolution firm, for which the Casanare Governor’s Office must pay the penalty.
In the decision adopted by the Second Administrative Court it is read that: “The DEPARTMENT OF CASANARE did not disprove the presumption of fraud or negligence provided for in Law 1333 of 2009, so the decision adopted through the accused administrative act was not derived from a failure in the evidentiary assessment attributable to CORPORINOQUIA, but rather decision was a consequence of the lack of interest of the territorial entity in the exercise of its rights of defense and contradiction.that is, the department lacked defense to avoid the sanction.
Source: news – HOLA Casanare