State Audit Agency addresses wrongdoingin ministries
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, November 18
The State Audit Office has already sent materials about the financial activities of the Ministry of Defense to the parliament’s confidence group. According to the office, the materials concern the purchases made by the Defense Ministry in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
The confidence group asked the State Audit Office to send the materials last week. According to Auditor General Lasha Tordia, the documents include wrongdoings with regard to some of the purchase transactions. He said there are questions concerning purchases carried out during the time of former Defense Ministers Dimitri Shashkin, Bacho Akhalaia and Irakli Alasania, though they are not related to the so-called cable case or soldiers’ meal provision. (Alasania was dismissed following the scandal regarding the cable system purchase and mass food poisoning of soldiers in 2013). The State Audit Office has been checking the Defense Ministry since 2013.
The State Audit Agency is checking almost all the ministries. Only the Minister of Energy Kakhi Kaladze said that the agency has not year checked his body.
Minister of Refugees Sozar Subari suggests that there is no state body without violations. “Much is dependent on the importance of the wrongdoing,” he says, adding that it is a direct obligation of the agency to carry out control of state institutions.
Minister of Finance Nodar Khaduri states that the agency has already checked his ministry and admitted that the body will speak about the outcome of the study itself.
Head of the agency Lasha Tordia states that more wrongdoings are detected in the ministries which enjoy large budgets.
“These are the Ministries of Healthcare, Defence, and Interior. The scale of monitoring of the structures is higher, as they undertake serious purchasing and financial transactions. The ministries carry higher risks of possible violations and accordingly they are priorities for us,” Tordia says.
However, Tordia does not exclude violations in the ministries that have smaller budgets.
Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs Levan Izoria says that he has no information on what violations the general auditor speaks of.
He states that the State Audit Agency studies the ministry’s financial activities every year.
