The consolidated financial report of the Superior Council of Magistracy provides a correct and reliable picture that meets the financial reporting norms and generally does not contain significant distortions, says the audit report on the Council’s consolidated financial situations on December 31, 2017 that was examined by the Court of Auditors in a meeting on November 29, IPN reports.
The Superior Council of Magistracy is an independent judiciary authority created to organize and ensure the functionality of the judicial system (Supreme Court of Justice, Court of Auditors and courts of law) and is the guarantor of the independence of the judiciary. The property managed by the Council and the courts of law is fully owned by the state. At the end of 2017, this property was valued at 351 million lei. Twenty courts of law remained after the optimization process.
Even if the general opinion is positive, the report highlights particular irregularities committed in the process of reorganizing the courts of law. These are related to the assets transfer-receipt transactions that were inappropriately determined and the cost were as a result by 51.4m lei higher.
The audit revealed that even if the right to own particular property (buildings with the initial value of 33.8m lei) belongs to the audited entities, it is managed by the Ministry of Justice and is leased out to the given entities. This distorted the data about the real estate included in the consolidated financial situations. Pieces of land with a total area of 2.8 ha and a total value of 3.6 million lei weren’t indicated in the accounting records.
Superior Council of Magistracy president Victor Micu said the process of implementing the law on the optimization of the judicial map is not easy and problems are experienced in unifying the accounting procedures of the entities that were merged. He assured yet that these will be solved and many of the identified faults were already removed.
