2004, the public hearing was held.136 In the framework of said hearing, Mr. López Mendoza’s defense presented various arguments of fact and law,137 regarding, among other things, his right to defense, the budget authorizations for each Mayor, the procedures to change the budget consignation, and the fact that “in the present case, there could be a violation of the right to equality before the law, given the declarations of the […] Comptroller […], which were brought on the fifth-day seminar that corresponded to the week of the 15th to the 22nd of October 2004, specifically in the case of FIEM,138 in which, pursuant to the defense’s criteria, he should have received the same treatment.” 139 76. On November 2, 2004, the Office of the Determination of Responsibility of the General Office of Special Procedures of the Comptroller General Republic issued a Deciding Order.140 This order, after recounting the facts, declared that: i) “in light of the constitutional and legal provisions […], the obligation arises upon the competent public official to carry out the budget, to carry out said activity, heeding to, on the one hand, the budget resources assigned for specific fiscal activities, and on the other hand, the need to make use of State funds for their intended purposes and not for other purposes, even though the latter is related to the inherent activities of the administration itself,” 141 and ii) “for the purposes of a possible declaration of administrative responsibility, it would be enough to determine, at first, the change in the consignation of the public funds, and second, that said purpose is different from the one that was originally foreseen, whether by law, regulation, or administrative act. This implies that any violation to the restrictive nature of the budget allocation, in terms of its qualitative nature, is enough cause to 136 Decision of October 26, 2003, in the administrative proceeding for the determination of responsibility (case file of annexes to the answer, tome XXVI, annex D, folios 10700 to 10754). 137 In particular, the following was argued: i) “in the Investigative Power carried out by the Comptroller General of the Republic, the right to defense was severed […], each time that he was not charged or accused specifically with regard to the evidence found in that phase,”; ii) “this Comptroller showed gross conceptual errors, in relation to the budget modifications, specifically those refered to the declarations of nonsubsistence; iii) “there is an evident lack of knowledge by the Comptroller, of the competencies of the Mayor as chief of the executive branch,”; iv) “in the current moments, before the Supreme Tribunal of Justice in the Constituitonal Chamber, there is an annulment hearing for unconstituitonality of numeral 4 of Artilce 22 of the Special Law on the Regime of the Metropolitan District of Caracas”; v) “in regard to the use of the Funds for differing purposes, […] the established proceedings were met, and the actions were issued by the competent authorities”; vi), and “the decisions adopted by the Council were supported by the opinion of the Municipal Comptroller of Chacao.” Minutes of the public hearing of October 26, 2003, supra note 136, folio 10702. 138 “[T]he President of the Republic, given the deficit, (as characterized by the Comptorller General of the Republic in an interview conceded on the Fifth Seminar Day, the week of October 15 to 22, 2004, No. 414, pages 22 and 23) would define as priority, the payment of the bonuses of the active and retired workers, instead of directing the funds used to make those payments, to the Funds Investment for the Macroeconomic Stablization (FIEM)”. The specific response of the Comptroller was the following: “With the Funds Investment for the Macroeconomic Stablization (FIEM) there was a cash deficit. I’ll state it in an example: the Republic should have honored expenses for Bs. 2 thousand and obtained income for Bs. 1 thousand; it decides if it passes this 1 mil to FIEM or uses them in for operating costs. The Republic decided the latter.” Minutes of the public hearing on October 26, 2003, supra note 136, folio 10746. 139 Minutes of the public hearing on October 26, 2003, supra note 136, folios 10702 and 10703. 140 Cf. Deciding order of November 2, 2004, issued by the Office of the Determination of Responsibility of the General Office of the Special Procedures of the Comptroller General of the Republic (case file of annexes to the application, annex 3, Tome V, folios 3240 to 3359). 141 Deciding order of November 2, 2004 of the Office of Determination of Responsibility, supra note 140, folio 3284. 34