QCOSTARICA — With only months before the end of his long (really long, like 32 years) term as mayor of San José, Johnny Araya was sanctioned by the Contraloría General de la República (CGR) – Comptroller General – with a 20-day suspension without pay for committing an erro by directly hiring a law firm. lawyers to serve as legal advisors in the Municipality without having sufficiently valid reasons.
The investigations of the CGR indicate that Araya endorsed said contract in August 2018 for an amount of ¢22.5 million colones with the justification of advising the Municipality’s jurists on labor-related issues, without qualitative and quantitative analyzes being carried out to particularly choose the firm BDS Asesores and execute such expenditure, according to the newspaper La Nación.
The only criterion that the mayor’s office would have considered at that time was the quote for professional services and Internet references of said legal firm, reasons that the Comptroller’s Office did not assess as having sufficient weight, leading it to the sanction against the highest authority of the city council, as well as well as the administrative director and the person responsible for Legal Affairs.
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The sanction, imposed in May 2023, became final in November after the supervisory body rejected an appeal for revocation presented by the parties who were blamed for such responsibility in the events.
Araya has been, with some time off for a failed run of the presidency of Costa Rica in 2014, mayor or chief executive of the country’s capital city, since 1998.
Recent changes to the elections of mayors, vice-mayors and councillors, eliminating back-to-back terms, among others, takes Araya out of the running for the 2024 municipal elections to be held on Sunday, February 4, 2024.
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