Azerbaijani Chamber of Accounts identifies financial violation last year

In 2023, as a result of the external state financial control measures carried out by the Chamber of Accounts, financial violations amounting to 562.5 million manats were identified, Azernews reports, citing the report on the previous activities of the Chamber.

According to the document, of this amount, 103.2 million manats constitute damage to the state budget, while 459.3 million manats represent other financial violations.

The collegium of the institution has proposed measures for the recovery and compensation of budget losses amounting to 60.7 million manats in cash and kind. As for the portion of damage amounting to 28.8 million manats related to social payments to the population, measures for its recovery have not been determined, and a decision has been made to suspend some payments. Material indicating signs of criminal offence regarding the damage of 13.7 million manats has been forwarded to law enforcement agencies.

Other financial violations include failure to adhere to the Unified Budget Classification, non-application of procurement procedures, division of contracts into parts for the purpose of circumventing these procedures, obtaining goods and services at prices higher than the market price, resulting in wasteful expenditure of state funds, failure to calculate the estimated cost during procurement, failure to clear the balance at the end of the year, presentation of unauthenticated electronic-invoice invoices, etc. The collegium has directly proposed measures for 34.9 million manats in relation to these violations, and other deficiencies and discrepancies have been referred to relevant parties for resolution in order to eliminate them.

The measures determined by the collegium include the closure of outstanding debit and increased creditor liabilities from previous periods, consideration of already made payments by physical and legal entities in future settlements, closure of the letter of credit account, reduction of contract amounts, investigation of cases of unjustified payments, cancellation of already paid electronic invoice-factures, return of balance to the budget, etc.

In 2023, in order to form results based on compliance audits conducted, audit evidence was compared with audit criteria, professional judgement was applied when analysing collected evidence, and an investigation was conducted to determine whether sufficient and relevant evidence existed. All evidence, as well as the relationship of audit objects, were reviewed to create an objective assessment during the evaluation process.