“With the execution of all the prescribed documents and consents, it can be assessed that the Minister of Finance Klemen Boštjančič, the then-Minister of Justice Dominika Švarc Pipan, the Government Office for Legislation, the Government of the Republic of Slovenia and the Prime Minister Robert Golob, through their actions, violated the provisions of the Public Finance Act, as they illegally reallocated funds from budget item 7608 – Current Budget Reserve, to budget item 298710 – Investment and Capital Maintenance of Judicial Buildings, NRP 2030-223-0017, amounting to 6.5 million euros, for the purpose of the purchase of the property in question.” This is how the audit report on the purchase of the court building on Litijska Street in Ljubljana puts the blame on those most responsible for the purchase – former Minister Dominika Švarc Pipan, Minister Klemen Boštjančič and Prime Minister Robert Golob.
The media outlet 24ur has obtained the full audit report on the purchase of the court building on Litijska Street in Ljubljana, which puts a heavy burden of blame on the already-resigned Minister Dominika Švarc Pipan, Minister of Finance Klemen Boštjančič, and Prime Minister Robert Golob. They illegally reallocated 6.5 million euros of the 7.7-million-euro budget for the purchase of the court building in question.
The audit report is reportedly 90 pages long and signed by the Internal State Auditor and Head of the Internal Audit Service, Suzana Hötzl. The audit began on the 18th of January, and the data covers documentation from April last year until May this year.
Staff members acted diligently
It is interesting to note that the audit report does not blame the staff members that Švarc Pipan wanted to blame for what had happened. The report even explicitly states that “the staff members who participated in the drafting of the contract and who checked and approved its contents did not act in contravention of any law or regulation …” At the same time, the report says that the Ministry had been warned about the unreasonable deadlines and irrationality of the purchase of the court building by the staff members, but that the Ministry’s management had ignored them.
Will Boštjančič and Golob resign?
The audit report puts a heavy burden on the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister of the current government. According to the Ministry of Justice’s experts, the Ministry of Finance, headed by Klemen Boštjančič, in its intention to implement the purchase before the end of 2023, “circumvented or adapted several of its own regulations, especially those which lay down deadlines for the completion of the budget for the outgoing year.”
According to the auditors, the Ministers of Finance and Justice knowingly took the risk of reaching flawed agreements and, by making irrational decisions, exposed themselves to the potential sanctions that such risks generate.
C. Š.
