by Rod Hughes

Costa Rica’s equivalent of the FBI director, Jorge Rojas, revealed his plans to step down from his director post on the country’s investigative agency, OIJ, to take early retirement. He gave as his reason the sad underfunding that makes it impossuble for the agency to meet the steadily increasing demands of crime.

An example of this were the 2003 arrests of two former presidents on corruption-related charges. The resulting probe into stacks of documents meant many detectives dedicating unpaid hours of off-duty time, plus using their own autombiles and fuel, even working at home on their own personal computers, a security risk but necessary due to lack of resources.

The overwhelming caseload inundating each agent is revealed by the figures: 58,000 criminal accusations this year alone and only 500 agents to deal with them. Complicated cases, such as the indictments against the two ex-presidents, often takes several years of digging before enough evidence is gathered to bring them to trial.

“Investigations have deteriorated in quality…” said the highly-respected, bookish-appearing top cop. As for the delaying effects on criminal prosecution, Rojas said, “This isn’t right, neither for the investigators nor for the accuser.” Rojas, who has been a professional policeman for 32 years, says he would have liked to stay on for a few more years, but the situation is disheartening.

The 2008 national budget, passed in early November, earmarks an increase in funding that only allows for inflation, a hike from 21 billion colones to 24 billion. (Dollar is worth about 500 colones.) Rojas estimates that he needs at least 500 more agents just to make up for lost quality. The budget authorizes him to only 40 more in 2008, and 25 of those will go to regional offices. “What’s left won’t even allow me to assign one more man to each office at central headquarters,” Rojas complains.

Last week, Supreme Court Chief Justice Luis Paulino Mora warned both OIJ and the public prosecutor’s office that they must make due with the funds assigned them. “Those are the resources the Central Government has that’s what we have at our disposal,” Mora said. OIJ, an arm of the court, must be satisfied with that.

Rojas became a detective in May, 1975, and went right into the field collecting evidence (much like the now-famous crime scene investigators romanticized on TV.) Between 1990 and 1997 he headed up the OIJ office in Alajuela before going back to the central office as Linneth Saborio’s deputy director. He took over from Saborio, who was the agency’s first woman director, in 2001.