The budget of Chisinau municipality was for the first time audited in accordance with financial audit standards. Audit samples were collected at the Chisinau City Hall and over 40 municipal entities. “Despite the efforts made to collect evidence, the audit team could not get sufficient and appropriate proofs that would confirm the plenitude and accuracy of the data presented in the financial report. According to indirect estimates, the distortions amount to 32.5 billion lei,” stated Rima Schastlivyi, senior state inspector of the Court of Auditors, IPN reports.
According to the situation on December 31, 2017, the auditors established that the property was inventoried fragmentarily at some of the entities, without determining the just value of assets. The Audit Office in 2012 recommended drawing up a Register of Residential and Non-Residential Property owned by the municipality, but such a register does not exist.
The Public Services Agency informed about the registration of 886 buildings, but the local public administration possesses information about the existence of 1,595 billings. The Chisinau City Hall is registered as a culture and entertainment construction of the Republic of Moldova, not of the local administration. The situation with the registration of municipal land is not better. The green areas also weren’t assessed and registered correctly.
Irregularities of 2.67 billion lei were identified in the registration of special constructions, including roads, passages and bridges. In breach of the accounting principles, the Public Transport and Communications Division registered works to repair, design and lay out infrastructure facilities as separate fixed assets, increasing their value by 559 million lei. Also, 17 roads of national interest remain unindicated in the accounting records of the Division and the City Hall. Two underground passages weren’t registered.
Attending the meeting of the Court of Auditors, deputy mayor Nistor Grozavu said they work to remove the identified irregularities. The municipal property was registered in three of the five districts of Chisinau. The process is slow due to the different methods of registering assets used by municipal specialists and by specialists of governmental agencies. The non-transfer of finished and unfinished facilities by different municipal divisions to the City Hall remains a serious problem.
