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The president of the Court of Accounts, Vítor Caldeira, should not hold office for the next term. The Government does not want to return him to power, so the proposal will not be made to the President of the Republic. According to the newspaper Sol, the target has already been informed of the decision. The decision comes after another audit in which the entity warned that the new rules that the government wants to impose on public works tenders open the door to corruption.
The newspaper said that the judge was informed through a phone call from António Costa, but, contacted by Expresso, the Court of Auditors reported that the president has no comment to make. From the Prime Minister’s office there was no indication of the Executive’s proposal, which is later appointed by the President of the Republic.
Vítor Caldeira, born in 1960 in Campo Maior (Portalegre), has been president of the Court of Auditors since October 1, 2016, when he left the European Court of Auditors to replace Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins. Therefore, the mandate has come to an end.
Although with a discreet profile (although he said in an interview with Expresso that “there is an emergency, but not everything can be done, not everything goes”), the positions taken by the Court in recent months have generated some controversy, especially because He promised that the Court would analyze the expenses incurred by the State in the fight against covid-19.
The most recent controversy is related to the new public procurement regulations, where the Government intends to impose flexibility, but which, in the opinion of this control body, means an increase in the possibilities of “collusion”, “distortion of competition”, “Cartelization” and even “corruption”.
“To be true, we are facing a real scandal”, declares the president of the CDS in a question addressed to the prime minister, after the news of the Sun. There, Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos questions how, with the new rules that the Government intends, ” Will public money be inspected, avoiding damage and corruption? ”. The presidential candidate of the Liberal Initiative, Tiago Mayan, also questioned, on Twitter, the news: “It is not only essential to reinforce the rules of transparency and control in public contracting, it is essential to reinforce the autonomy of the supervisory entities.”
New bank under audit
Also on the table is the possibility of convening the Court of Accounts, as the Left Bloc and the Social Democratic Party want, to audit the New Bank. In fact, the institution has already assumed that it will be able to do so, but only at the request of Parliament. Therefore, the Government will choose who will be the personality to direct such an audit, if it actually occurs.
Provided in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, the Court of Accounts, which “is the supreme body to control the legality of public spending and to judge the accounts submitted by law”, has the powers to, among others, issue a opinion on the General State Account, as well as supervising the execution of the State Budgets.
