The political parties involved in the last legislative elections must now submit their financial reports for the electoral campaign to the Court of Auditors. The institution has just reminded the parties of this obligation through a press release.
After the expenses, here is the moment of the accounts. The seven parties that campaigned during the legislative elections last January will now justify their expenses to the Court of Auditors. It is not a simple formality insofar as faults are liable to penalties such as a fine, disqualification from office, ineligibility. Here’s what you need to know about auditing campaign accounts for the legislative elections.
- Campaign forecast account
The campaign accounts are preceded by the provisional accounts submitted prior to the elections by the candidates, in this case the lists in competition, namely 7 political parties. According to the electoral code (art.98), it is 40 days before the elections that the parties communicate their expenditure forecasts to the Court of Auditors.
- Filing of election campaign accounts
After the elections, there are reports on the execution of the provisional accounts by the political parties running for the legislative elections. The deadline for providing the Court of Auditors with these reports is 60 days after the proclamation of the final resultsi.e. on March 12 as recalled in the press release from the institution, the results having been announced on January 12.
According to the electoral code (art.99), parties file campaign accounts, attaching supporting documents.
- Publication, observations, denunciations, sanctions…
After receiving the accounts, the financial jurisdiction publishes them for 15 days. This publicity is intended to collect the observations of the parties and the candidates on the various financial statements.
The Court, following the accounting checks, denounces, if necessary, any overrun of the authorized expenditure threshold, to the competent criminal judge. With regard to the legislative elections, it is the Court of First Instance of Cotonou which experiences irregularities.
- Limitation of election campaign expenses
During the verification of the electoral campaign accounts, the Court of Auditors will question in particular the respect by the parties of the ceiling on the amounts of expenditure. This ceiling is 30 million francs per candidate, or 3.270 billion per party for the 109 incumbent candidates.
But that’s not all, this cap only concerns eligible expenses as election campaign expenses, which are exclusively those incurred by candidate promotion actions during the 15 days of the campaign. As a result, the deposit required of candidates during the candidacy as well as the costs incurred by the constitution of the files are not taken into account in the expenses of the electoral campaign.
- Reimbursement of campaign expenses
Reimbursement of election campaign expenses is linked to account verification. Indeed, according to article 100 of the electoral code, “the State allocates a lump sum per elected candidate”. Et “in any case, the lump sum to be reimbursed cannot be less than 10 million francs per elected candidate without however being greater than the total amount of expenses mentioned in the campaign account”.
- Penalties for exceeding election campaign costs and non-compliance with non-filing of campaign accounts
“Is sentenced to a fine of five million (5,000,000) to fifty million (50,000,000) CFA francs, to forfeiture and/or a penalty of ineligibility of one (01) year to five ( 05) years, any political party or any individual taking part in the elections of the President of the Republic, of the members of the National Assembly, of the members of the communal or municipal councils and of the members of the council of the village or of the district of town who will have hired for the electoral campaign, by himself and/or by a third party, expenses beyond the amounts set by law. Are punished with the same penalties the individual candidates or the political parties which having taken part in the ballot refrain, within sixty (60) days following the ballot or the election, from filing against receipt with the competent court in charge of the Accounts, the campaign account accompanied by supporting documents for the expenses incurred. However, the political parties concerned may, after payment of the fine, participate in any electoral consultation”. (Article 262 of the penal code).
In addition to the penalties provided for in this article, there are others which are the consequence, namely the forfeiture of office:
“Any candidate for the elections of the President of the Republic, of the members of the National Assembly or of the communal or municipal councils and of the members of the councils of the village or of the district of town, sentenced to a penalty of forfeiture of civil and political rights is automatically ineligible for the duration of the sentence and in the event that the vote is acquired, his election is invalidated“.
Gap between theory and practice
In practice, the control of electoral campaign accounts in Benin raises questions as to its feasibility and even its credibility. Indeed, at with the exception of the unprecedented conviction of Lionel Zinsou in 2019 for exceeding election campaign costs, among other things, Beninese political life has almost never experienced major events related to the expenses of electoral candidates. Would the parties and candidates in the various elections be so respectful of the prescribed standards for election expenses? Not so sure !
In its reports sanctioning the examination of the campaign accounts of the 2015 elections (municipal and legislative), the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court noted among other shortcomings: “the total or partial absence of supporting documents, the execution of ineligible expenses, non-certified invoices, fictitious invoices…”. Former President of the Audit Bench which has now given way to the Court of Auditors, Maxime Bruno Akakpo also reports “the impossibility for the Audit Bench to establish the sincerity of accounts in a business context dominated by informality”.
In this context, citizens could be dissatisfied with the verdicts of the Court of Auditors on the campaign accounts in consideration of the flagrant spending sprees by candidates during the elections. “What I regret is that the courts seized do not go far in the investigations. The public prosecutor’s office, which is seized of the overruns, must do its job. The Audit Bench, which also receives the accounts, can, on the basis of the supporting documents, question and obtain information”suggested in 2015 the jurist Serge Prince Agbodjan in a interview at The nation.