For the second consecutive year, the Court of Accounts refers the prosecutor's office for violations in the Ministry of Culture, Nova TV reported.
Excerpts from the audit report for the department's annual financial statements for 2024 have been sent. This is happening for the second consecutive year, after the audit institution referred the Prosecutor General for 2023.
In both 2023 and 2024, the audit team expressed a “negative opinion“ – the most severe assessment, which is given in the event of comprehensive deviations that distort the true and accurate picture of the institution's activities and finances.
The 2024 audit establishes:
• crime data sent to the Prosecutor's Office
• significant violations of accounting legislation and budgetary discipline;
• critical lack of documentation in the Rhodope Drama Theater “Nikolay Haitov“ – Smolyan, including the absence of accounting information for over a year;
• incorrect reporting of assets, depreciation and revaluations, violation of the instructions of the Minister of Finance;
• lack of effective internal control and cases of unresolved copyrights.
The audit team does not receive assurance about the completeness and reliability of the accounting data, which led to the negative opinion.
The corrections during the audit include incorrectly accounted assets and performances, uncharged penalties and interest, as well as other violations, including in the National Fund “Culture“.
For 2023, the National Audit Office also sent materials due to data on inefficient spending of public funds in 18 state cultural institutions. Some of the files subsequently ended with a refusal to initiate pre-trial proceedings.
In 2024, the Chief Inspectorate of the Council of Ministers also revealed systemic violations and illegal spending of funds during inspections of officials controlling the activities of cultural institutes in Razgrad and Smolyan. The inspection was ordered by the then Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev.