Several questions have been raised regarding the performance or constraints faced by Lebanon’s Court of Audit in recent years. More specifically, article #47 requiring a detailed report of financial and monetary control over government spending and reforms was withheld for the years 1999 and 2000.

This act raised doubts regarding the Court’s ability to oversee national spending and financial arrangements.

In addition, the combined report finally released for the previous two years did not incorporate various accounts of government transactions and financial routing.

The Court’s control of national funds does not extend to most public institutions and municipalities including the CDR, the Central Fund for the Displaced, the Council of the South and Elyssar.

Decisions of the court

During the years 1999 and 2000, the Court took 2,696 decisions distributed as shown in Table 7.

The value of rejected projects reached around LL 116 billion in the two years discussed above. However, law governing the Court transfers unapproved proposals to the Council of Ministers, which has the authority to override the Court of Audit’s decision in cases of contradiction between the two.

In 1999, the Council of Ministers did not contradict any of the Court’s rejected verdicts, but in 2000, it approved several projects, challenging the opinion of the Court, without notifying it of all its decisions and reasons.

Among the decisions reported were the following:
• Granting equipment to the Civil Defense at a value of LL 12.2 billion.
The Council of Ministers approved this project based on its resolution #12 dated 3/5/2000, although it had been refused by the Court of Audit based on resolution number 418/P.C. dated 8/7/1999.
• Renewal of contracts related to joint social services between the Ministry of Social Affairs and other local organizations for the year 2000, at a value of LL 4.8 billion.
• Contracts of sale of the government’s private properties in the Ras Beirut area to the Central Bank at a value of LL 7 million.
 

Distribution of Court's Decisions

Future role

The importance of the Court of Audit’s report lies in its timing. It coincides with the release of a draft law modifying the General Accounting directive prepared by the government.

This draft law aims at further limiting the control of the Court, even though its power over various other councils has already been eliminated.

Despite its limited financial and human resources, the Court of Audit can still play an important role in limiting the squandering of finances.

Table 8 below illustrates the value of projects rejected by the Court of Audit. Some of these were later overturned by the Council of Ministers however.