“KNAB is currently checking the 2023 annual reports of the association of political parties “Jaunā Vienotība” (JV) and other political organizations, including evaluating whether the state budget funding received last year for political parties and their associations has been used in accordance with the requirements of the Law on Financing Political Organizations (Parties)” KNAB’s communication department said to “”.
KNAB states that the office must inform the public about the results of the annual report inspections of political organizations at the same time, that is, when all inspections have been completed, but no later than April 1, 2025.
“For this reason, KNAB can neither confirm nor deny whether a violation has been detected in the activity of a political organization, which would give grounds to suspend or stop disbursing state budget funding to the political organization,” KNAB states.
If the audits of the annual reports confirm that one of the political organizations has a reason to suspend or stop the payment of state budget funding, KNAB will inform the public about this fact before January 15, 2025, when according to the regulatory framework, the current state budget funding payment must be made. In addition, KNAB informs that KNAB has not sent a warning to the political organization “Jauna Vienotība” about the suspension or termination of the state budget funding.
KNAB confirms that at the beginning of August, during the inspection of the annual report, it sent a request for information to the political organization “Jaunā Vienotība” and received a response to it. KNAB cannot comment further on this request for information, as it has a limited availability status.
It has already been reported that KNAB may have found a violation of the party financing law in the JV party association. It would provide for the repayment of more than 30 thousand euros to the state budget, according to the report Days available information.
Such a violation, in fact, means that receiving state funding for the party could be in jeopardy.
KNAB’s publicly available information shows that in 2023 JV received almost one million euros from the state budget.
Unofficial information shows that the violation is related to the fact that Sanita Stelpe-Segliņa, the former Acting General Secretary of the party, received a salary from both the party and the Central Election Commission (CVK) at the same time.
Stelpe-Segliņa was the acting general secretary of the party until March 19 of this year, after the departure of Arta Kampars from the position of general secretary of the party. On the other hand, the current composition of the CVK was elected on February 2, 2023. Therefore, it can be concluded that the law could have been violated in the period from February of last year to March 19 of this year.
The Law on the Financing of Political Parties stipulates that KNAB, after receiving information, makes a decision to stop the payment of state budget funding, among other things, if it has been established that the party has violated the law by illegally using the state budget funding allocated to it in the amount of more than 30,000 euros in the relevant year, and the decision on the crediting of illegally used state financial resources to the state budget has entered into force, – for one year.
According to the results of the 14th Saeima elections, 13 political parties and their associations were eligible to receive state budget funding in 2023. In total, party maintenance has cost taxpayers more than 5.6 million euros (5,675,351.04).
In 2023, “New Unity” received the most – 992,000 euros, followed by the Union of Greens and Farmers with 796,045 euros and the United List with 700,141 euros. Next comes the National Association (666,063 euros), “Stability!” (470,897 euros), Latvia First (442,244 euros), “Progressives” (448,548), PLI (290,055 euros), “Saskaņa” (330,518 euros), “Platforma 21″ (187,365 euros), ” Sovereign Power” (165,184 euros), and JKP (186,287 euros).
It has already been announced that on June 11, KNAB decided to suspend the payment of state budget funding to the National Union for a year, as the party has significantly exceeded the permissible limit of spending state budget funding for communication with society and political agitation in 2022. In turn, at the end of May, KNAB ordered the political party to repay all illegally spent 210,673.59 euros to the state budget.
KNAB found that the association exceeded the percentage limit that is allowed to be spent for one purpose of using state funding provided for in the Party Financing Law. Namely, the party spent 554,627.19 euros for communication with the public and political agitation, which is 210,673.59 euros more than the law provides. The National Union announced that it will appeal these decisions.
2024-08-22 02:57:27