The level of implementation of the recommendations formulated by the Court of Auditors for the local public authorities following audits conducted at the mayor’s offices in Nisporeni, Ungheni, Balti, and Comrat is very low. Only about 16% of the recommendations were implemented fully. 24% of the recommendations were implemented partially, while 60% remained unimplemented. Some of the LPAs do not obey the periodicity (each quarter) in informing the Court about the measures taken to do away with the irregularities.
In a news conference staged by IPN, Iana Spinei, expert of Transparency International-Moldova which carried out a study of the implementation of the Court of Auditors’ recommendations, said that among the reasons for the uneven implementation of the Court’s recommendations are the lack of internal managerial control in the LPAs, the insufficient responsibility of decision makers, the shortage of staff and inappropriate training of the personnel, faults in the fiscal legislation, the lack of a normative/methodological financial-accounting framework, imperfection of the information systems managed by the State Tax Service and the LPAs.
The audited LPAs noted that some of the Court’s recommendations are general, ambiguous or rather complex. This creates uncertainty in their implementation. Also, the LPAs devoted attention to problems whose solving depends on the central authorities. Their non-solving amplifies the risks of loss of local budget revenues. There were noted in particular the imperfections of the Automated Information System Fiscal Cadaster 2.0 owing to which the reassessed real estate units are introduced in the system with a delay of up to 22 years, the property tax payments – with a delay of up to 15 years. This leads to the appearance of artificial debts and unjustified penalties. Some of the LPAs warn that the task of assessment/reassessment of real estate assigned to the LPAs hasn’t been carried out for many years: for 8 years in the case of housing; for 16 years in the case of garages; for 12-15 years in the case of lots.
Transparency International-Moldova determined that the risks of fraud and corruption generated by the non-reporting and non-solving of conflicts of interest by local elected officials are rather big. Practically each second document by which integrity inspectors ascertain violations of the conflict of interest regime refers to local elected officials. In this connection, Transparency International-Moldova recommends improving communication between the Court of Auditors and the audited LPAs, staging workshops with representatives of the LPAs by the Court so as familiarize these with the Automated Information System “Audit CCRM” and teach them how to use it, more actively engaging the State Chancellery in the monitoring of the implementation of the Court of Auditors’ recommendations, especially of those whose implementation has lasted, improving the quality of the Court of Auditors’ recommendations, avoiding vague and complex formulations, specifying concrete measures that need to be taken, such as the posting of the results of the Court of Auditors’ audits, local councils’ decisions, action plans and concrete measures taken to deal with irregularities in a special section on the websites of the LPAs.
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