Gov’t stepping up efforts to address financial discrepancies

AMMAN — The government has announced that it is implementing procedures and taking decisions to deal with violations recorded in the 2018 Audit Bureau report.

During a press conference on Monday, Minister of State for Prime Ministry Affairs Sami Daoud said that the bureau is cooperating with relevant institutions rectify violations in the report, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Last week, Prime Minister Omar Razzaz received a copy of the 2018 Audit Bureau report, which recorded a total of 3,531 violations, stressing that the government would deal with the cases in the report in a “firm manner”. 

During the press meet, Daoud added that the team formed to review and rectify the violations started reviewing the 2019 report, and is expected to finish before the end of the first quarter of 2020. 

The minister said that most of the cases recorded in the report are related to public money embezzlement, counterfeiting, illegal tenders, illegal allowances, illegal vehicle allocation, illegal travel allowances and the disregard of collecting public money.

For his part, Minister of State for Media Affairs Amjad Adaileh said that the government has taken a series of procedures to instil the principles of integrity and transparency. 

Adaileh noted that the government was keen to rectify violations before issuing the report, upon a proactive directive by Prime Minister Omar Razzaz.

Bureau President Asem Haddad said that the monitoring role of the bureau is not limited to state institutions, but also covers municipalities, companies whose capital is at least 50 per cent owned by the government and any institution that the Prime Ministry decides to include.