“Consel has sufficient information to make a decision based on the reports of the Comptes Audit Office”

This week the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazónannounced that the entire public sector will be subject to external audit “irregularities” Six public companies identified by Sindicatura de Comptes and other supervisory bodies were closed “hypocrisies” others already exist. Given this measure, Comptes Ombudsman Vicent Cucarella speaks of an “abnormal” situation.

Did the irregularities identified in the Comptes Audit Office’s reports cause Consell to request an external audit?

Normally we We are the external control body of the administration, the person who performs such inspections. What little we know about this subject we have learned from the press and from what we have been able to read it seems internal investigationIt is different from control. In this case, it gives the impression that they detected a problem and therefore started an investigation. to bring to light everything that exists. Which We don’t know what kind of report they are planning what they achieved or what irregularities they refer to.

“We should ask the Generalitat what kind of investigation they want to conduct.”

What is the diffrence?

We always highlight specific issues in our report, such as: abundance of unjust enrichment files or misuse small contracts. Although there are practices prescribed by law For very special situations and they should not be exploited. Therefore, we underline that precautions must be taken to avoid such situations, but I think what is being talked about now has nothing to do with this issue.. We should ask the Generalitat what kind of investigation it wants to conduct.

Based on the audit reports submitted in December, is there a need for further investigation?

It depends on what you’re looking for. We did not detect any signs of accounting liability in our latest reports, but I don’t think this is the kind of report the Generalitat government plans to do. In our reports, whether in financial audits, legality audits or operational audits regarding efficiency and effectiveness, Sufficient information is available to make a decision and detect non-conformity needs to be fixedand you can manage it more efficiently. It would make sense to dig deeper if there were indications of accounting accountability, but there are none.

Do you see this as a loss of reputation for your work?

I did not interpret this as an attack on our business, quite the opposite. I never felt like the institution was being questioned or anything like that. More precisely, I perceive this thanks to our intervention reports. It was felt that some issues needed to be investigated in more depth.. It’s our job to monitor and control the public sector, but from what I’ve read it seems that’s not it.

“We do not understand this external audit as an attack on our business, we consider it to be responding to the Generalitat’s request to investigate.”

In your experience, is it common to request such files when there is a change of government?

Yes, such investigations have existed in the past, not necessarily audits, but throughout the history of governments it often happens with change of administration, some attempt to conduct research to understand the status of a particular issue. However, I don’t remember anything like this being done in recent years. Something is being talked about now “Judicial investigation”, focuses more on searching certain cases of fraud and corruptionBut we don’t know exactly what it could be.

There is also talk of shutting down six public companies…

The following statement was made from the agencies: They want to eliminate some of it. but actually most of them are not in action. Some have been created but have no existence and do not yet have personnel. Savings will not be achieved by eliminating these.. If the purpose for their creation is deeply meaningful, the service will be provided by that organization or department itself. In this situation, I think this research has been approached in the wrong way.After all, what they have to do is To verify whether the purpose of these institutions is important or not or interesting to society and decide on it.

Sindicatura has been reporting other irregularities for years, such as small contract override…

Small contracts are often they are demonized. But they do exist and are completely legal. The problem arises when a contract is made which should not be less due to its amount. It is fragmented to avoid the entire public and open tender process. This is the issue that we, as the Court of Accounts, have criticized more than once. Then they might lack of planning and we emphasize this in our reports as a situation to be avoided. It is important to emphasize that small contracts are not wrong, what is wrong is breaking contracts.

The same situation applies to unjust enrichment cases.

Equal. Even though the unjust enrichment file is prescribed by law, it should not be generalized. We identified 611 such files in fiscal year 2022. These are used to pay for services currently provided to the public sector that could not be paid at that time due to lack of budget. Although this application is intended for certain situationsMore than 1.3 billion euros were paid in this way in 2022 and by the end of 2022 more than 1.5 billion files have already been processed, which means that next year there will be many more similar files and We have not seen any progress in this area.

What does the Ombudsman think when he sees that there is no solution to these situations?

At Sindicatura we always have a double impression. On the other hand, Thanks to our reports, we see improvements in the public sectorThis is something that makes us very happy. However, on the other hand, we also observe that we are not making as much progress as we should. We know that sometimes it is difficult to change the dynamics and ways of working, as in the cases of unjust enrichment, but the necessary attention is not paid to improvement. Policymakers need to make decisions to solve this problem, but we must take action to achieve this.

“We detected 611 unjust enrichment files in the 2022 fiscal year and we did not observe any development in this area.”

The leadership of the organization you manage was supposed to be renewed in June 2022 but is still in stasis.

In fact, the Court of Accounts had to be renewed a year and a half ago. I know that there were talks at that time but no agreement was reached. We know that negotiations were held after the elections, but no consensus could be reached. Regeneration of these organs, Support of three-fifths of the CortesThis means that the government must have the support of the opposition. For this, parliamentarians need to reach an agreement and I do not know what the current state of the process is.