Audit Reports: Finance Ministry Made Unauthorized Payments To Staff
22.01.2013, Today’s Zaman
Audit reports of Finance Ministry expenditures in 2011, prepared by the Court of Accounts, have shown that the ministry made unauthorized payments to its staff.
Audit reports of Finance Ministry expenditures in 2011, prepared by the Court of Accounts, have shown that the ministry made unauthorized payments to its staff.
The reports were not submitted to Parliament for examination as deputies convened to discuss state expenditures in December of last year. The Court of Accounts was scheduled to send the reports to Parliament by September 2012, but did not, citing its inability to complete the reports in time. Today’s Zaman was able to obtain some of the reports.
The court is the only body that audits the expenditures of state institutions. The court has not yet sent the reports to Parliament.
According to the reports, various ministry staff who were employed as assistant supervisors at Finance Ministry offices in rural parts of the country were presented in official documents as instructors and paid extra.
A team of 59 auditors from the Court of Accounts was assigned to audit the expenditure of 419 state institutions for 2012. The Court of Accounts spends most of its annual budget on drafting audit reports and was allocated a budget of TL 142 million for 2012.
The reports of Finance Ministry expenditures in 2011 also showed that ministry employees were given extra payments, such as food and clothing allowances. Whereas only certain Finance Ministry employees are entitled to food and clothing allowances, the ministry allowed its entire staff to receive the allowances.
In addition, the ministry leased out pieces of property at vastly reduced fees, which were then, without the ministry’s knowledge, sublet to others at higher rents. One such estate is land in Istanbul’s Sariyer district on which a gas station was built. The ministry leased the land for around TL 110,000 for 2011. It was subsequently sublet for approximately TL 1.5 million.
The Finance Ministry also suffered financial losses in 2011 after it made concessions on the ownership of several pieces of real estate and handed them over to the Religious Affairs Directorate. The Court of Accounts defined the ministry’s action as being “without legal grounds” in its audit reports. Part of the revenue from the leases was supposed to be transferred to the state as taxes, but the ministry did not pay the taxes, saying it did not receive any income from leasing the land.
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