Miguel Albuquerque considered today that the “situations” detected by the Court of Auditors (TdC), in their assessment of the Madeira Promotion Association, were “lapses” not “intentional” and without “gravity.”
“The function of the Court of Auditors is to make the legal framework of the issues and, obviously, we will comply with these recommendations, although they are situations that are not serious, otherwise we would have been sanctioned with a fine,” said the President of the Regional Government, on the sidelines of the inauguration of the exhibition “Private Investigations,” by Teresa Brazão, in Funchal.
The Court of Auditors warned this Monday of the “poor reliability” of the internal control system of the Madeira Promotion Association, which received public funding of 27.8 million euros, but did not report all the support granted.
In an audit, the TdC points out that, under the heading “Marketing and Sales Plans,” after evaluating a sample of 28 supported projects, “the attribution of support to entities without evidence of compliance with the general access assumptions established in the regulation” was detected.
Reacting to the problems identified, Miguel Albuquerque justified that the procedures are usually “very bureaucratic” and that there may have been “some lack of knowledge,” but assured that “there is no situation of serious irregularity.”
“Therefore, there is a set of procedures that should be done in X or Y way and not as we are doing. We rectified. There is no problem,” he said.
Albuquerque also criticized the “unimaginable bureaucratic complexity of a public administration” today, comparing it to a “centipede with millions of legs.”
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
