site.btaNational Audit Office to Check Majority State- and/or Municipal-Owned Companies, Parliament Resolves

National Audit Office to Check Majority State- and/or Municipal-Owned Companies, Parliament Resolves


Sofia, January 22 (BTA) - The Bulgarian National Audit Office
(BNAO) will conduct audits of commercial corporations in which
the State and/or a municipality holds an interest exceeding 50
per cent regardless of the amount of that interest, the National
Assembly resolved Thursday, passing conclusively parts of the
new Bulgarian National Audit Office Act.

The majority defeated a motion by BSP-Left Bulgaria that the
BNAO should also audit companies in which the State and/or a
municipality holds a minority interest exceeding 1 million leva
and municipalities with an annual budget of less than 10 million
leva. On behalf of the GERB Parliamentary Group, which moved
the bill, Budget and Finance Committee Chair Menda Stoyanova
explained that the Audit Office is entitled and bound, when it
checks the relevant ministry which exercises the State's
ownership rights in a company, to check its participating
interest as well. Another argument against the motion is the
shortage of auditors. Stoyanova dismissed as speculation the
allegation that this type of audit is excluded from the BNAO
remit. In her words, the extra budget allocated to the BNAO for
such audits should bring a return.

BNAO President Lidia Roumenova denied that her office lacks
sufficient auditing capacity. "It is a matter of arrangements,
of priorities, of placement and of audit capabilities," she
pointed out. She assured the MPs that the BNAO has such capacity
and is competent to audit municipalities with an under-10
million leva budget. "The BNAO is in a position to cope with the
tasks that will be assigned to it," Roumenova insisted.

"You legitimized impunity for major abuses, you gave a green
light to corrupt practices," Tasko Ermenkov MP of BSP-Left said
after the provisions were voted through.

Another motion, by Peter Slavov MP of the Reformist Bloc, that
auditing joint venture companies be included in the scope of the
BNAO' competence, was carried by the majority. Slavov said his
proposal was prompted by the South Stream case, in which it is
not clear whether the money will be recovered now that the
project has been scrapped and what will happen to the
investment. "A fifty-fifty joint-venture Bulgarian-Russian
company has been incorporated for the implementation of that
project," the MP recalled.

Maya Manolova MP of BSP-Left objected to a provision according
to which the BNAO will audit the accounts of funding from the EU
and under other international programmes and treaties, arguing
that "management of accounts" (as the text reads) is different
from funds management and is limited to financial audit but does
not mean audit for conformity, among other things. That is why
the Socialists insisted that the provision be rephrased to
empower the BNAO to audit funding from the EU instead of the
accounts, so as to be able to check the way EU money is spent.
The majority rejected the motion.

Roumenova confirmed that the original wording in the bill is
limited to audit of the accounts and does not imply management
of EU funds.

The National Assembly will be competent to assign up to five
audits annually to the BNAO, other than those included in the
annual programme, Parliament resolved.