The black box of the patent: Deputy Juan Martín Jorge revealed that a handpicked company determines how much you pay

In January, thousands of Uruguayans opened the SUCIVE website and found a hit to their wallets. The Colorado deputy Juan Martín Jorge was one of them. Ten months later, and through requests for access to public information, he published on Thursday what he found. The result is a portrait of a system that handles a fortune and does not account to anyone.

Jorge does not deny the origin. He acknowledges that the creation of SUCIVE in 2012 "was a good idea" because it ended the patent war between municipalities. But he warns that "the years and the lack of transparency have created vices that must be cut off."

An agency that Parliament cannot even ask

The first finding is opacity. According to the legislator, almost no information from SUCIVE is publicly available. Everything he obtained was as an ordinary citizen, through the access to information law, because he discovered that Parliament cannot make requests for reports.

And there is not even anyone to turn to: requests must go to the Congress of Intendants, because SUCIVE does not have legal personality. "Opacity if there ever was," he summarized.

A private company decides the value of your car

The second point is the most serious. Who sets the value on which the patent is calculated? It is not SUCIVE. According to Jorge, it is done by a private company that, in turn, works with almost the entire insurance market.

How was it chosen? Without bidding. The deputy claims it was hired by direct designation, that it has been the same since 2012, and that in 14 years not even a price competition has been called.

In 2025, it charged $U 5,368,680 plus VAT, about 135 thousand dollars. If the contract has run in those terms since the beginning, Jorge estimates, it amounts to almost 2 million dollars billed directly.

República AFISA: 0.4% of everything you pay

How can the Congress of Intendants hire like this when it is prohibited in the public sector? The answer is the vehicle: all awards are made through the SUCIVE Trust, managed by República AFISA, the fund manager of Banco República.

"República AFISA is also chosen directly," the deputy denounced. And the business is not minor: the trust manages, according to his estimate, about 800 million dollars annually. There are 15 trust administrators registered with the Central Bank who could compete for it.

According to the contract he accessed, República AFISA charges 0.4% plus VAT of all collected. With that estimated collection, it amounts to 3.2 million dollars per year, plus VAT, for a task that, Jorge argues, those who know it understand is simple.

Assessments that no one controls and a judge that is part of it

Who verifies that the value assigned to each vehicle is the real market value? "No one," the legislator responds. SUCIVE provided him with the assessments from recent years and, according to him, an online survey is enough to verify that those numbers do not match reality.

On top of that, there is an evident conflict of interest: the Congress of Intendants, which is the one that collects, is also the one that defines the system. For Jorge, it will always prefer the highest possible value. The only solution, he says, is for prices to be set transparently and with effective citizen oversight.

How much does SUCIVE cost? They don't want to say

The most basic question went unanswered. The Congress of Intendants did not provide information on the total cost of the system and referred the deputy to the "SUCIVE Monitoring Commission," an entity that depends on the Congress itself and, according to Jorge, has no website or address.

What is known is that there are more expenses than are known. The contract with República AFISA provides, in its clause 11.4, for expenditures for "consulting, auditing, legal advice, advertising, and other costs," which are paid separately. The deputy believes there are many other contracts he did not have access to.

And the bill is paid by the national government

The conclusion is hard to believe. Someone might say that, since it is money from the municipalities, it is their business how they spend it. But Jorge argues that, despite collecting millions, it is the national government that pays for the administration of the fund.

There is documentary evidence of those transfers: a resolution from the Presidency authorized the Ministry of Economy to transfer up to 20 million pesos to República AFISA to cover obligations of the SUCIVE operation corresponding to 2025.