Criticism of the Court of Auditors – Sharp criticism of COFAG, but ex-boss sees praise

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Officials ignored, instead, high fees for outside consultants and suspected job seekers: these are some of the things the Court criticized in its crude report on the Corona aid organization COFAG. The opposition sees this as confirmation of its assessment and Wolfgang Peschorn, chairman of the Finanzprokurator, also agrees with the criticism. Former COFAG director Bernhard Perner, who has reportedly received twice the salary, sees many positives in the report.

According to Peschorn, the state administration, which had been bypassed, could also have coped with the challenges, he told “Ö1”. He justified this by saying that the fraud detection system the finance department had set up had been used at COFAG (short for the federal Covid-19 financing agency). In addition, the government has a great deal of experience in paying out subsidies.

Dual Jurisdiction: Difficult to Investigate
The remuneration Perner received as a temporary COFAG director needs to be examined. He is said to have received twice the salary because he was also a director of the state mining company ABBAG. COFAG is a subsidiary of ABBAG. According to Peschorn, the test will be “difficult and challenging” because: “COFAG belongs to ABBAG and the representative of the owner of ABBAG at COFAG is Mr. Perner,” explains Peschorn. Perner himself does not believe that a refund will be necessary. But he wants to stick to the result of the test.

Peschorn – as head of the financial prosecutor’s office, so to speak the advocate of the republic – also emphasizes the importance of this case: “It concerns about a quarter of the annual budget of the federal government. That is a lot of money. look at you very well.” Peschorn also agrees with the criticism in the Court of Audit’s report that there was no documentation and no involvement of the specialized departments. In any case, there was time for an internal discussion in the ministries involved. happen so dramatically quickly.” Perner replied that he had been called to a crisis management team meeting and taken responsibility for which he had not seen “extreme rush.”

Peschorn explains that COFAG relied on outside advice, costing millions, with “advisory and interest networks”. These are “people who have influence in various positions in various state-related companies, but at the same time want to exclude the influence of state institutions”. Former COFAG boss Perner, who was a confidant of ex-BAG boss Thomas Schmid, dismisses this criticism: “COFAG would not have worked without legal experts in the ministry, financial administration and applications through FinanzOnline,” he says in the Ö1 “Tomorrow news quoted.

Perner: Relatively few cases of fraud
According to Perner, the consultancy costs of 21 million euros were mainly due to test costs. In the crisis situation, the availability of qualified accountants was no different and therefore resources from the field of accountants and tax advisers were called upon. Perner praised the rough report for the low number of fraud cases compared to other European financiers and the fast turnaround times. This was only possible because the applications were checked fully automatically together with the Ministry of Finance, using algorithms and existing data from the financial administration.

The opposition, on the other hand, views its criticism of COFAG as an opaque “black box” confirmed in the crude report published by the Court of Auditors on Tuesday. FPÖ and NEOS demand the immediate dissolution of COFAG. FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl is calling for an amendment to the law that would prohibit such outsourcing and only allow it under full parliamentary scrutiny and regular auditing by the Court of Auditors.

COFAG “never needed”
Karin Doppelbauer, finance and budget spokeswoman for NEOS, said COFAG was created deliberately to evade parliamentary scrutiny. SPÖ finance and budget spokesman Jan Krainer is demanding reimbursement of Perner’s multiple payments and disclosure of where the funding went and clarity about the consultancy fees. According to Krainer, the Republic never needed a COFAG.

Source: Krone

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