Ministry of Health set up state public enterprises but controlled them poorly
Press Release – February 12, 2009
From 2005 to 2007, the state public enterprises set up by the ministry were not under the appropriate surveillance as concluded auditors from the Supreme Audit Office (SAO) after performing an audit at the state enterprises: BALMED Praha and the state curative spas in Bludov, Janské Lázně, and Karlova Studánka.
Insufficiencies in the founder’s deeds were revealed. Final accounts and annual reports were submitted later than required by the schedule and the authorisation of the redundant property’s sale was delayed too. The Ministry of Health inaccurately set up competence limits for the boards of trustees, thus giving up the control over the above mentioned state enterprises. In addition, the auditors found out that the state enterprises kept accounting incorrectly and made mistakes in the real estates’ registration and the property qualification records. In 2001, the state curative spas in Bludov made a deal with a partial proprietor – a trading company, which allowed them to assign shares of buildings and grounds without the founder’s approval.
“In mid 2007, the Ministry of Health ordered a juristic analysis of the deal and its possible defeasibility, but no decision on further tactics was reached until the end of the SAO auditing operation. Another example is the state enterprise BALMED Praha, which manages and trades the property of privatized state curative spas in successive steps. They only got approval in one from the six appeals for property sales handed in to the Ministry since 2006 till the end of the audit “, said president of the SAO František Dohnal.
The SAO audit also revealed insufficiencies in acquiring and maintenance of the public enterprises’ tangible property. For example, the reckless bath reconstruction in the State Curative Spas Karlova Studánka that resulted in 19 amendment agreements and advancing the price by CZK 13 847 000, which is almost 50 % more than the initially agreed sum.
The auditing operation was included into the 2008 Audit Plan of the SAO under No. 08/21. Antonín Macháček, Member of the SAO Board, controlled the operation and prepared the audit conclusion as well.
Radka Burketová
Press Speaker
Supreme Audit Office