This article examines the audit of public accounts from 2004 to 2010 in five branches of the Government of Sonora. The research question is what the audit carried out by the Supreme Audit and Audit Institute is so effective in combating the misuse of public resources. When the legal framework was revised, it was contrary to the fact that the Institute does not have the power to sanction, and that this is the task of the Secretariat of the Contract General, which is a function of the same executive. On the other hand, when analysing the observations, remedies and sanctions included in the results reports submitted by the Institute, it was found that the Office of the Executive is exempt from comments, and that on the other premises the number of these increased, while the number of those resolved tended to decline during the period. Finally, there is no information linking the unresolved observations to the penalties applied by the contractor. The overall conclusion is that due to the structural design of the audit returning to the scope of the executive for the application of sanctions, the audit of the institute, while preventing the misuse of resources in the operational areas of the state administration, does not prevent or prevent the misappropriation of high-level funds.