The Court of Audit found breaches of the Public Finance Act in the inadequate planning of the purchase of an office building for the judiciary, which the government paid for out of the state reserves and provisions in a rushed purchase just before the New Year, and they also recognised the failure to respect the principles of efficiency and economy in the purchase of this office building, as well as in the purchase of 10,000 laptops.
This was written in the audit report on the closure of the 2023 budget, published on Wednesday, the 4th of August.
The Court of Audit’s audit of the state’s operations in 2023 found irregularities in the area of the budgetary reserve, in the disbursement of the general budget reserve, in the areas of salaries, current and capital expenditure and transfers. According to the Court, in the case of the budgetary reserve, it was found that the use of the reserve in excess of 2 percent of the available reserve funds was not decided by a specific law of the National Assembly. The funds provided by a government decision for the implementation of intervention measures on road infrastructure as a result of storms that happened at the beginning of August 2023 were not fully used to protect the health and life of people, property or the environment, nor to prevent further damage or to ensure other basic conditions in accordance with the Law on Protection against Natural and Other Disasters. The general budget provision provided budget users with a total amount of 6,674,144 euros for foreseeable purposes, of which 6,500,000 euros was spent for the purchase of an office building for the needs of the judicial authorities.
In the area of current and investment expenditure, the most frequent irregularities found were in the implementation of public procurement procedures, which were linked to breaches of the Public Procurement Act, and breaches of the Public Finance Act, notably in relation to inadequate planning of the purchase of an office building for the needs of the judicial authorities, failure to comply with the principles of efficiency and economy in relation to the purchase of this office building, and the purchase of 10,000 laptops.
It was the purchase of the court building that led to the resignation of the Minister for Justice, Dominika Švarc Pipan, but not the Minister for Finance, Klemen Boštjančič, who gave millions from the budget reserve, which is something he should not have done by law.
Regarding the purchase of 10,000 laptops, the auditors pointed out that the government had not adopted a regulation to regulate the management of the mechanism and the way in which the right to borrow computer equipment is exercised. Irregularities in the area of transfers were found mainly in relation to the failure to monitor the performance of legal persons or the implementation of their approved programmes, but also in relation to inappropriate commitment (without
written contracts or contracts concluded after the services have been rendered) and non-compliance with contractual provisions, late transmission of the basis for the preparation of the financial plan to the indirect budget users, inadequate implementation of the procedures for the allocation of funds to beneficiaries, and failure to respect the principles of efficiency and economy.
Although the Ministry of Health had already started some activities in 2023 to improve the control over the allocation of funds to the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia (ZZZS), the control over the disbursement of these funds and the verification of the eligibility of the accrued funds in the monthly claims before their payment were still not satisfactory. The Ministry of Education also still did not exercise adequate control over the disbursement of funds to indirect budget users in 2023. In 2023, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation did not yet ensure timely monitoring of the contractual obligations of the Public Agency for Research of the Republic of Slovenia (until the 10th of May 2023) or the Public Agency for Scientific Research and Innovation of the Republic of Slovenia. Irregularities in the awarding of concessions for the operation of the public utility service of regular passenger transport services by inland roads were also not corrected in 2023.
The 10,000 laptops, most of which are still waiting in a warehouse in Logatec, will be debated for a second time in Parliament at the request of the largest opposition party, the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), which has filed another vote of no confidence against the Minister for Digital Transformation, Emilia Stojmenova Duh, over the laptops in question The government has defended the minister and said that everything was fine with the deal. Here is what the auditors wrote, among other things, about what the government considered a “good purchase”:
“The Ministry has concluded contracts with laptop suppliers for the purchase of 10,000 laptops and has disbursed budget resources totalling 4,978,975 euros, while the regulation referred to in paragraph nine of Article 23a of the Promoting Digital Inclusion Act, which would regulate in more detail the management of the mechanism and the way in which the right to borrow computer equipment is exercised, and thus regulate the distribution of laptops, has not yet been adopted. As a consequence, most of the laptops purchased were not in use by the end of 2023, which also resulted in storage costs of 2,883 euros for the Ministry for Digital Transformation in 2023. In addition, the 180-day supplier’s guarantee against hidden defects in the equipment, the 1-year warranty periods and the 5-year period during which the supplier has to ensure the availability and compatibility of spare parts started to run upon their acceptance. Given that the purchased computers are actually equipment that becomes obsolete quickly and therefore has to be distributed soon after it is purchased, in this case, we would expect the Ministry for Digital Transformation to time the purchase of the said laptops with the adoption of legal bases that would allow the management of the mechanism and the way in which the right to borrow computer equipment is exercised, and thus the distribution of the purchased laptops as soon as possible. For these reasons, we have found that the Ministry for Digital Transformation has not complied with the principles of efficiency and economy, as laid down in paragraph 3 of Article 2 of the Public Finance Act, in the implementation of the budget.”
Peter Jančič, Spletni časopis
