The Court of Accounts has hit the Barcelona Supercomputing Center for controlling the credit cards of senior officials. According to him, he has detected that “there is no adequate control of bank card payments” by senior officials at the center.
This is stated in the ‘Draft audit report of the Barcelona Supercomputing Certer Consortium-National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), fiscal year 2015 to 2022’ of the Court of Auditors, to which Servimedia has had access.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center is 60% owned by the State, 30% by the Generalitat of Catalonia and the remaining 10% is owned by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
The report explains that the organization has “extensive use of credit cards repeatedly criticized by the Regional Intervention of Catalonia for being contrary to the very statutes of the consortium” that makes up the Center.
It detects that the criteria for the use of the cards are met in a “very lax” way and there is a lack of justification when they are exceptional “in most cases.” The Court of Auditors specifically points out a movement of 526,283 euros in 2018 and 305,646.97 euros in 2021 from the financial department for a card that is used for acquisitions and general expenses.
The Court of Auditors observes that in 2018, 16 bank credit cards were identified, in the name of 13 holders, which accumulated payments of 734,923.49 euros. In 2021 there are 17 bank cards with payments of 356,189.78 euros. “There is no adequate control of payments by bank card,” according to the Court, given that in 2018 the ‘Visa Creditors’ account presented a debit balance of 5,923.29 euros, which is “contrary to its accounting nature” and that This is due to the fact that there are four canceled cards without movement in 2018 with an accumulated debt of 6,215.51 euros for “payments linked to unjustified trips.” According to the consortium that makes up the Supercomputing Center, the majority of the balance corresponds to an employee who in 2018 was no longer part of the staff.
The audit report indicates that of the active cards in 2021 “there are seven that are not identified in the accounting, their amounts having been incorporated into other cards of the same holders. Cards with movements in accounting and without movements in the bank are also observed, and the reverse situation.
From the observation of the management, the Court of Auditors also warns that, when analyzing a sample of banking movements, there are other incidents such as “delay in the accounting of several operations of more than one month in several cases, even reaching more than one month. anus”. Furthermore, it highlights that “the system does not contain many bank receipts for payments” and “several purchases made through payment gateways (Amazon or PayPal) appear in accounting by their ultimate supplier, or through the generic counterpart ‘Creditors for services'”. In that sense, it warns that “this generic counterparty is abused to reflect banking transactions with clearly identified suppliers.”
On the other hand, it observes numerous bank card payments for amounts greater than 1,000 euros, a total of 20 payments in the 2021 sample that total 90,720.34 euros, and “several payments that correspond to computer equipment (including some equipment) without completing the centralized contracting procedure established for these expenses.”
Likewise, “numerous expenses for formal or representative services in hotels and restaurants in Barcelona are paid through the cards of the consortium directors and are recorded as accommodation and subsistence expenses.” The report indicates that these payments, in most cases, “lack the necessary explanatory memory that accompanies the supporting documents, through which the need being met, the benefit or usefulness for the administration can be clearly verified.” , and they also lack “the names and positions of the interested parties, in accordance with the criteria repeatedly set forth by this Court and by the General Intervention of the State (IGAE).”
