In the morning of 18 November 2022, a workshop for collecting comments on the Ordinance on Handling administrative violation in the state audit field was held in Ha Noi by the State Audit Office of Viet Nam (SAV). Member of the Party Central Committee, the Auditor General of SAV Ngo Van Tuan chaired the workshop
Overview of the workshop
Participants of the Workshop included representatives of the Office of the National Assembly; National Assembly Committees which are in charge of Finance - Budget, Law, and Justice; representatives of ministries, departments and central agencies, including Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Planning and Investment, Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Public Security, Government Inspectorate, Supreme People's Procuracy; representatives of localities, including Hai Phong city, Bac Giang province, Vinh Phuc province; Viet Nam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group.
SAV’s representatives joining the workshop included Deputy Auditor General Dang The Vinh; members of the Drafting Committee, the Editorial Team of the Ordinance Project; Leaders of SAV subordinate units.
“After nearly 30 years of operation, the legal framework for the organization and operation of SAV has been improved synchronously in terms of the Constitution, the State Audit Law, SAV’s audit standards, processes and guidance. The scale, quality and efficiency of state audit activities have been continuously improved” - said the Auditor General at the opening of the workshop.
Auditor General Ngo Van Tuan delivered the opening speech at the workshop
However, violations in the state audit field tend to increase and are characterized as follows: Refusing to provide information and documents requested by SAV; Misrepresenting, or providing inaccurate and insufficient audit-related information; failing to comply with audit decisions; failing to prepare and send SAV financial statements, investment project settlement reports, revenue and expenditure plans, reports on state budget execution and finalization as requested on time; failing to sign the audit minutes; failing to report or follow-up audit conclusions and recommendations and so on. These shortcomings have hindered audit activities, significantly affecting the effectiveness and efficiency of SAV's operations and the strictness of the Law on State Audit.
On 26 November 2019, the National Assembly ratified the Law with amendments and supplements of several articles of the State Audit Law, in which at point 3, Article 1 of the Law added the authority of SAV on "Handling administrative violations in the field of state audit” in accordance with the regulations of the Law on handling of administrative violations.
In order to implement the Law with amendments and supplements of several articles of the Law on administrative violation handling and the Law with amendments and supplements of several articles of the State Audit Law, the development of the Ordinance Project on “Handling administrative violation in state audit field” is required for improving the legal system of SAV; creating a legal basis for handling legal violations made by the auditees, and stakeholders in the state audit field; improving the effectiveness of SAV’s audit activities and the strictness of the legislation.
During the drafting process, SAV has closely coordinated with the Committees of the National Assembly, relevant ministries and departments to perform its tasks as regulated. In order to obtain the high quality of the project, meeting practical requirements, the Auditor General suggested the workshop participants focus their discussion on the following 03 key areas: Determining administrative violation activities in the field of state audit; the appropriateness of fine levels with the nature and acts of administrative violations in the field of state audit; Proposing appropriate handling procedures for the SAV which has specific characteristics and professional activities.
At the Workshop, on behalf of the Drafting Committee, the Director General of the Department of Legal Affairs, SAV, Mr. Vu Thanh Hai said: "The draft Ordinance on handling administrative violations in the field of state audit was developed based on the perspective of: fully and comprehensively institutionalizing viewpoints and guidelines of the Party on the state audit; facilitating SAV to be an important and effective tool of the Party and State in inspecting and controlling the management and use of public finance and assets, simultaneously, creating a legal basis for the SAV to have the right in offering proposals on handling the law violations, enabling the strict implementation of the Law on State Audit; selectively absorbing international experience and recommendations of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) on handling administrative violations in the field of state audit in line with Viet Nam's practice".
Regarding the Ordinance structure, the draft is proposed to comprise of 5 Chapters with 17 Articles: General provisions; Acts of administrative violations, sanctioning conducts, sanctioning levels and remedial measures; Competence of preparing minutes, sanctioning and imposing remedial measures; Procedures for sanctioning, enforcement of sanctioning decisions and coercive enforcement of sanctioning decisions; Terms enforcement.
Accordingly, the main contents of the Ordinance include the followings: Regulations on administrative violations; sanctioned subjects; sanctioning conducts, sanctioning levels, specific remedial measures in the field of state audit; sanctioning principles; competence and procedures for making minutes, detailed regulations on sanctioning competence, application of remedial measures, and enforcement of the implementation of the decision on handling administrative violations in the field of state audit.
At the workshop, there were 14 comments, focusing on the necessity of further research for completing submittals, documents and relevant procedures, clarification of acts which may suffer administrative sanction; conducts of administrative sanctions, sanctioning process, levels, competence, enforcement measures, and so on in the draft Ordinance.
Deputy Auditor General Dang The Vinh expressed his gratitude and high appreciation for the participant's comments. Those comments showed the enthusiastic, straightforward and responsible characteristics during the research and development of specific contents of the draft Ordinance. In addition to academic, professional and in-depth comments, there were also comments showing problems during the implementation once the Ordinance was approved.
The Auditor General requested the editorial team to fully take into account the comments of participants, prepare the summary records of the workshop and report the workshop's results to SAV Leaders, the Ordinance Development Steering Committee; continuously complete the draft Ordinance together with related documents. The Deputy Auditor General expects that the Ordinance Development Steering Committee, the Drafting Board and the Editorial Team will continuously receive the coordination and cooperation of experts, ministries, departments and localities to develop a feasible and practical Ordinance./.