Cabinet Approves Audit on 2006-2010 Spending
The cabinet has approved draft-laws to conduct an audit on extra-budgetary spending made between 2006 and 2010 by the governments of ex-Premiers Fouad Saniora and Saad Hariri.
The approval came during an eight-hour session held at Baabda Palace under President Michel Suleiman which also witnessed a solution to the controversial electricity plan.
The extra-budgetary spending is at the center of a dispute between the March 8 forces and the March 14 opposition coalition which had been asking for a comprehensive settlement to the spending made since 2006.
But the government approved the draft-laws which tackle the spending of each year separately.
The head of the parliamentary finance and budget committee, MP Ibrahim Kanaan, who is a member of Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc, hailed earlier this week the finance ministry’s transfer of the detailed accounts to the cabinet.
The bloc had insisted on a breakdown of accounts for the $11 billion spent by Saniora’s two governments.
Another $5 billion was spent by Hariri’s national unity cabinet in 2010 but the major controversy lies on the $11 billion which Aoun’s bloc claims was riddled with embezzlement.
The government’s approval of the draft-laws on the 2006-2010 spending should pave way for a parliamentary discussion of a cabinet bill to legalize $5.9 billion in extra-budgetary spending made by Premier Najib Miqati’s cabinet in 2011.
The March 14 forces boycotted two legislative sessions to reject the approval of the bill without a settlement to the spending of the previous years.
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