The Assembly's initiative for the SSC raises questions about the violation of independence

The Assembly has recently proposed the establishment of a new parliamentary structure within the Committee for Economy and Finance, the audit work of the Supreme State Control, the highest institution of economic and financial control.

The draft decision on the establishment of the subcommittee "On Auditing the Public Sector" announces as its main goal the implementation of the state budget and increasing the impact of audit processes in order to increase transparency and accountability in the use of resources, but the main area of ​​its work will be be "the report of the KLSH to the Assembly".

The foreseen competences of the subcommittee will focus on the reports of the government and the HSC on the implementation of the state budget, the review of the audit reports of the HSC, the follow-up of the implementation of recommendations and the reporting of findings, but also the control of the use of finances public from this institution itself.

In this context, the accounts of KLSH will be audited by this parliamentary structure through external auditors contracted by it.

The subcommittee will be run in a bipartisan manner with co-chairmen of the majority and the opposition, while there are 5 members in the composition, where the SP has the majority.

Although opposition MPs in the Economy Committee have supported the proposal, they expressed distrust in the intentions of the majority and raised questions about attempts to control this independent institution.

DP MP, Bujar Leskaj, who has served as chairman of the Audit Committee during his career, told BIRN that despite the fact that international auditing standards accept and encourage these structures, in order to increase efforts to implement the recommendations of supreme audit institution, in the Albanian case it has a different purpose.

"The main goal is not to implement the recommendations of the SAA, but to intervene in policies and auditing activities, which significantly undermines the independence of the SAA", he commented, adding that "this implementation will also violate the auditing standards".

Member of Parliament Jorida Tabaku supports the right of the Assembly to have more information about the work of the SSC, about the reports that this institution carries out on the use of public finances, but on the other hand, she has reservations about the behavior of the majority towards this institution.

"It is within its right for the parliament to do this, but the concern is that this can only be done as a result of the fact that the KLSH is creating concerns and the majority's response to the reports of this institution is the control of the institution itself". Tabaku said.

For the democratic deputy, the subcommittee aims to be "a kind of commission of inquiry into concessionary contracts and reports of the KLSH", since, according to her, it is expected to examine dozens of periodic reports that the KLSH carries out, in addition to the reports on the implementation of the budget.

But, Tabaku added that, there is a deadlock in the behavior of the SP towards the last annual report of the SSC on the implementation of the state budget, which is not being analyzed according to the parameters of institutional independence in the Economy Commission.

"At the last meeting, the chairman of the commission announced that he has sent this report to many external parties and has received a number of questions from them, that for us this violates the independence of the institution", she said.

For his part, the socialist chairman of the commission, Eduard Shalsi, described the process of collecting questions as a practice that serves transparency and made available to BIRN a list of over 60 questions that await answers from the chairman of the KLSH, Arben Shehu. in the report to the commission that is expected to be held next week.

In the report on the performance of the government in the implementation of the budget for 2023, on which Shehu will report, an economic damage of 72.3 billion lek was found by the HC due to the mismanagement of public funds and legal violations committed by the state and local administration during of 2023.

Shehu, who has been leading this institution since July 2020, described the new subcommittee as an instrument that will serve to speed up the implementation of the recommendations that KLSH assigns to audited public institutions".

"We see the work of the subcommittee in the general plan of promoting the implementation of these recommendations, improving the work of the institution, and I hope that the focus will be on the interaction between the Assembly and the KLSH in function of their implementation", he told BIRN via a phone conversation.

But, when asked if he was concerned that the work of the subcommittee could infringe on the independence of the SSC, Shehu warned that; "If we see that there are tendencies to undermine the independence of our work, we will pursue all the instruments at our disposal, notifying our international partners as well"./BIRN