Comptroller s moves to audit lawmakers

A  team of auditors from the office of the Comptroller General is preparing,  to move to the National Assembly this week in the next few days, to carry out an audit of lawmakers’ expense reports.

The move comes after the recent ruling of the Supreme Court denied an appeal by Assembly the president of the AN, Yanibel Ábrego, against the comptroller Federico Humbert’s earlier attempt to audit the returns.

The Comptroller’s Office will execute the audit to Form 080, mainly in the periods corresponding to the presidency of Ábrego (2017 to 2019). According to Humbert,  about 20% of the information that has not been available. He stressed that the ruling saves the State from being exposed to more injuries.

Humbert said he felt “honored” by the ruling of the court.

On May 16, 2018, Ábrego filed an appeal for guarantees with the Court after the Comptroller sent a group of officials to audit the 080 form, “bonuses, incentives and other services of the Assembly “.

, Ábrego argued that the action taken by the Comptroller was illegal since it was left i the Assembly from exercising “its right to defense. “

In its ruling the Supreme Court said that the Comptroller “is an independent state agency of a technical nature, whose mission is to monitor, regulate and control the movements of funds and public goods, and examine, intervene until the accounts related to them expire. “

Meanwhile an ongoing audit of the  Municipality of San Miguelito,  headed by  Mayor Gerald Cumberbatch. which will cover the period 2014 to date has revealed people miossing from their jobs  and people included in reports that “nobody knew who they were.”

 According to the monitoring of the Transparency and Access to Information Authority (Antai), in March, the Municipality of San Miguelito has  compliance of only 29% of the law which dictates rules on the transparency in public management.