The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity AMAN sent a series of letters to the Palestinian Cabninet, the Ministry of Finance and Planning, the State Audit and Administrative Control Burea (SAACB) and the Anti-Corruption Commission, to demand the mentioned official to do what is necessary to guarantee the preparation of final accounts of the general budget according with the provisions of law and the principles of transparency in managing public affairs. Moreover, AMAN called for adopting a set of recommendations which were issued by a study conducted by AMAN to examine the compliance of the government and official public institutions with the legal provisions related in preparing final accounts by the Ministry of Finance and to be audited by the State Audit and Administrative Control Burea.
The most important recommendations in the letter sent to the Prime Minister Dr.Rami Hamdallah, emphasized that the Palestinian Cabinet must pressure the various competent officials , including the Ministry of Finance to prepare the financial statements on time and to emplement the recommendations of the SAACB, whereas the study was summarized in problems about emplementing the legal provisions related to the preparation of final accounts by the Ministy of Finance on time, causing a lack in applying the accountability and transparency principles in public expenditure, whereas the Ministry of Finance has not issued the final accounts for the years 2013-2014-2015 till now.
The recommendations sent by AMAN to the Ministry of Finance emphasized the need to abide legal provisions of the final accounts, and issue them on time, committing to the transparency principles through publishing accurate financial statements on time, Moreover, the Ministry of Finance and other responsible parties must fix the issues related to work stability such as the continuous rotation of employees, the lack of consistency of technical teams and need of the Ministry to follow up the observations and recommendations made by the SAACB in their reports of closing accounts.
As for the role of the SAACB, AMAN called for the publications of all its reports to achieve the principle of transparency in order to allow civil society organizations to work and pressure to strengthen accountability for the public expendure.
The last letter was sent to the Anti-Corruption Commission, which called for following up the cases mentioned in the SAACB reports on the audited final accounts which contains suspicion of corruption and the need to transfer such cases to the responsible parties once they have been proven, in addition to demanding accountability from the responsible parties about deviations in the audited reports for the final accounts, even if these accounts were from previous years, or the term of office of those officials in the public office or moved to other jobs.
These follow ups are cohereant with AMANs work strategy in the follow up with the responsible parties for any recommendations issued by the reports and studies prepared, noting that the absence of the Legislative Council has significantly weakened the system of control, accountability and accountancy.
