Turkish Court of Accounts won’t audit public spending for another three years: Report

ISTANBUL - Radikal

The Court of Accounts will not be able to inspect official accounts for another three years, as state institutions will not be obliged to provide their accounts for inspection, according to an amendment to a law published in the Official Gazette last weekend.

The new amendment paves the way for public institutions not to submit their budget reports to the Court of Accounts, which has already been unable to audit the accounts of public institutions for the last two years, according to expert figures speaking to daily Radikal yesterday.

“As balance sheets and financial statements in the institutional bases cannot be provided at this point, we will be auditing in three years. But this will be limited. If institutions accommodate themselves to the new regulations, we will be able to adopt the new system faster,” officials from the Court of Accounts said, according to the report.

In 2012, for the first time, the Court of Accounts did not present its 132 auditing reports to Parliament because they were “not in accordance with the new law.”

This year the Court of Accounts prepared 140 reports, but a majority of them read “this institution was not audited, we cannot report.”

On Dec. 11, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader blamed the government for not allowing the court to render accounts to Parliament.

“Why are the reports by the Court of Accounts being concealed from deputies?” CHP head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu asked in the budget session, saying reports were not being submitted in order to “conceal corruption.”

“This budget is not a legitimate budget. The legitimacy of a government that is not accountable to Parliament will always be under question,” Kılıçdaroğlu added.

Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek denied that the government had prevented the court from sending the audit reports to Parliament.