The Senators have completed on Thursday the amendments to the statute of Court of Auditors, cutting the abilities of the institution, although the European Union had warned that European funds will be cut if Parliament changes the law – among the amendments being the fact that the institution would not have anymore the ability to recover damages, adevarul.ro informs.
The Senate, as decision making body, approved the law amending the organisation and functioning of the Court of Auditors. The draft bill was filed in November 2017 by several PSD and PNL MPs, nevertheless, initially it was not so tough.
Several amendments filed afterwards, adopted by the Senate on Thursday, dramatically limit the Court’s capabilities. Thus, the Court, meant to check the state institutions, including ministries, public local and central authorities, state companies – is turned into a pseudo-institution, with decisions made not by the plenary, but by court president Mihai Busuioc. He had been state secretary with the PSD governments, one of the closest collaborators of PSD chairman Liviu Dragnea, the same source informs.
The court’s plenary include also Bogdan Stan (former head of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration – ANAF) and Florin Tunaru (former ANAF Vice-president), both of them former collaborators of the PSD leader.
The same source says the most important amendment aims at recovering the damages found by the Court of Auditors, following the audits.
The amendments have targeted the elimination of the article reading that “the damage needs to be recovered in full to cover the loss and the unachieved benefits.” The adopted draft bill reads that the Court of Auditors will conduct controls “on the way the state and public financial resources are formed, administrated and used, through external public audit,” but “without having a say on the opportunity of the operations.”
The draft bill, initiated by Senator Daniel Zamfir, reads that during the public procurement procedures the opinion of the National Agency for Public Procurement (ANAP) will be considered, and not the one of the Court of Auditors, as in 2016. At the time, the Court of Auditors found damages in public procurement amounting to RON 102.1 million.