Billions-worth irregularities in public institutions

2016’s annual report of the Audit Court of Turkey uncovers irregularities in government agencies worth of billions of Turkish lira
Thursday, 05 October 2017 06:16

 

The data in the annual report of the Audit Court of Turkey shows infractions of rules in at least four governmental agencies: General Directorate of Highways (KGM), the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of National Education (MEB), and Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), and the Turkish Statistical Institute (TürkStat).

Commissioners of audits found that the KGM used the funds allocated to road building and improvement works for irrelevant works. The KGM was detected to have used the 362.922.000 Turkish lira (more than $100 million), which was spared to "raise the standard of the roads with asphalt coating", for service procurement, consultancy, car rental, and landscaping.

It was also determined that the KGM had used 391.815.000 Turkish lira (nearly $110 million) for the projects that are not within the investment programs, which reportedly caused the program to be disabled.

Moreover, it was found that the KGM lost more than 849.900.000 Turkish lira (approximately $240 million) because of the illegal transitions at electronic toll collection booths.

The ruling party AKP, on the other hand, continues to use the backup budget as a secondary budget for unforeseen expenses. Even though the Audit Court limited the backup budget to the 2% of the whole budget, which makes up to more than 2.5 billion Turkish lira (nearly $700 million), the Ministry of Finance spent 35.5 billion Turkish lira (almost $10 billion) until the end of 2016.

The report states that illicit money transfer occurred between public administrations and the backup budget, which would not happen if the budget appropriations within the scope of the central administration had been determined compatibly to the budget principles.

What is more, the MEB reached their 92 goals out of 137, and made "modest progress" in 25. It is explained in the report that the 500 million lira (nearly $140 million) was allocated to the 32.85% of the MEB’s goals which they had failed to achieve. The most significant failure of the Ministry was the Project FATİH (Increasing Opportunities and Improving Technology). The MEB had planned to distribute 600.000 tablets to teachers and students in 2016 in the context of Project FATİH, but the number remained at 11.881. They also failed to reach the targeted number of the books to be distributed to students. The goal was 150.000 books; it remained at 28.728.

The report also indicated that the MEB did not signify the expenses related to the failed goals, which caused the Audit Court to lack the information as to how much of the sources was used for them.

The report shows that the TMSF transferred money anomalous to the legislation. The TMSF transferred money to an anonymous corporation for the structured public debts. The amount of the money is also spectacular: 305.982 GBP (more than $405.000) in 2015, and 196.638.628 Turkish lira (more than $55 million) in 2016.

Lastly, it was revealed that the TürkStat, which has been receiving reactions from the public due to the errors in their calculations of national income and growth rates, did not record 11 premises that were made available to them. The report states that this lack of records affected the completeness and accuracy of the financial charts of the institute since the premises could not be tracked in the records.