audit

Court of Auditors demands that former Catalan president Mas and 10 more officials pay approximately 5 million euros in bail

The Catalan Parliament approved on Thursday the Law on Transparency, Information Access and Good Governance with 81% in support and 2% in opposition. This bill comes a few months after the Catalan Government was graded 100 points out of 100 by Transparency International Spain for the information it makes available to citizens through its website about public contracts, tenders, subsidies and elected officials. However, these measures also come after years of corruption scandals, which have not only occurred across Spain, but also in Catalonia. The main parties have backed the new law, while two other parties abstained and one voted against the bill because they said they did not trust the governing centre-right pro-Catalan State coalition CiU. With the new law, access to information will become a citizen’s right, which can only be limited when it affects people’s intimacy or a few other exceptions, including public security. 

The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, organised a summit with top representatives from all the public powers involved in the fight against corruption and fraud to exchange ideas and come up with a set of measures. Political parties were not invited and some of them have protested. After the meeting, Mas explained that the attendees agreed to transform the Transparency Agreement from 2001 regarding the funding of political parties into a law in order to enforce it. Furthermore, the Catalan Government will allocate more resources to the judicial powers investigating the main corruption cases. The attendees agreed to compile the initiatives discussed in a document and meet again in two weeks’ time.

The President of the Catalan Government and leader of the Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition (CiU) is organising a summit to define new initiatives against corruption. The meeting will be held next week and will gather together the main representatives of the Catalan Parliament, the Supreme Court of Justice of Catalonia, the Catalan Ombudsman, the Catalan Court of Audit and the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia. Political parties are not invited, as the summit is thought to be “complementary” to Parliament’s actions. The Catalan President will ask the attendees to provide him with ideas so that he can channel them and put them on the table for a wider debate. In the last few months, many corruption scandals have affected politicians in Catalonia and the rest of Spain.

However, CatalunyaBanc would need a maximum of €10.83 billion in the most stressed scenario. According to the independent audit by Oliver Wyman, with KPGM, Deloitte, PwC and Ernst & Young, the Spanish banking system would need a maximum of €53.75 billion in the worst case scenario. 4 banking groups would concentrate 86% of these additional funds. In total, 7 banking groups would need additional funds, while 7 groups would be strong enough, with their own resources, to resist a hypothetical scenario with a 6.5% recession between 2012 and 2014, 27% unemployment, a 85% drop in land prices and a 55% decrease in housing prices.

The current Catalan Government, which took office last Christmas, hired an external auditor to better understand the state of the public finances. Deloitte has increased the Government’s deficit for 2010, from 3.86% to 4.2%, in line with the last data known and internally audited. The Catalan Minister for the Economy, Andreu Mas-Colell, explained that “one out of every three euros spent [in 2010] was not covered by tax revenues”. The main opposition party, which formed part of the previous Government and was in charge of finances, stated that their management cannot be made responsible for the deficit increase, as the deficit calculation criteria has changed.

The new Catalan Government announced today that the budget for 2011 (currently the 2010 has been extended) will be ready within the next 4 months and approved before the summer break. The Government’s Spokesperson, Francesc Homs, said that for the first time, the budget will be “clearly smaller” than the previous year’s. In addition, the new Government asked for an external audit on the Catalan public administration’s finances.