“This Council is convinced that we must go in to see what has happened in the instrumental public sector,” says the Minister of Finance and spokesperson, Ruth Merino. The spokesperson for the Valencian government also made these statements after the Plenary Session of the Consell held this afternoon in Valencia in which she presented some figures from the audit of the instrumental public sector. The Consell, which has been aware of the report submitted by the General Intervention of the Generalitat (corresponding to the execution of the Annual Public Sector Audit Plan 2023 referring to the financial year 2022), is “concerned”, in the words of Merino, because ” There are worrying data.”
“We want to know how each euro of Valencians has been contracted so that the truth is known and the appropriate decisions can be made,” explained the Minister of Economy and Public Administration, who has advanced that they have found “many more regularities in treasury, contracting , goods and services, etc.”.
Among the data that Merino has advanced, of 42 entities subject to the obligation to obtain wage bill, only 17 of them have wage bill authorized by the General Directorate of Budgets, which means that over 84% of the amounts paid as remuneration in In these entities there is no authorized wage bill.
Merino has also pointed out that, with respect to the authorizations for the hiring of temporary labor personnel, regulated in the Budget Law of the Generalitat for the financial year 2022, it has been confirmed that during the financial year 2022 the entities of the instrumental public sector of the Generalitat Valenciana 8,092 temporary labor personnel have been registered, while the authorizations carried out by the General Directorate of Budgets have been 3,046. There are, therefore, in fiscal year 2022, more than 5,000 hirings of temporary labor personnel that have not had the required authorization from the General Directorate of Budgets.
Regarding contracting, 53 entities have been audited. Of these, the Consell points out that there have been five that have received a positive assessment, 40 entities have received a favorable rating with qualifications or observations, eight were unfavorable and one entity has received a denied assessment.
Regarding the “most significant” incidents in this area, the receipt of goods and services without the appropriate contracting file has been detected for an amount of 117.2 million euros (which represents 17.22% of the total contracts awarded in the instrumental public sector).
On the other hand, the Plenary of the Consell has approved the programming of the specific financial controls that will be carried out during 2024 compared to the year 2023, among which is the performance of a forensic audit of the public sector of the Generalitat.
The work to be carried out with the ‘forensic’ audit will consist of forensic reviews and fraud investigations, expert evidence, arbitrations and mediations, preparation of expert reports, as well as other complementary, expanding and/or clarifying reports of the previous ones; and their presentations, if applicable, before the General Intervention, or ratifications in judicial headquarters and/or arbitration courts.
