Teleradio-Moldova SC is positioned as a company with a dual regime in the budget classification system. It is financed both from budget subsidies and its own revenues from advertising and others. The process of planning and execution of financial resources totaling 334.7 million lei “was carried out unevenly in the budget system,” the auditors said.
What is meant is that in 2023-2024, TRM received budgetary transfers from the Ministry of Finance. TRM received budget transfers of LE 148.9 million and LE 185.7 million, respectively, which amounted to about 89% and 88% of its total annual revenue. But the company’s expenses “due to shortcomings in planning, budget reporting and financial control at the level of management and financial units” exceeded the approved limits by 21.5 million lei.
The transparency of resource allocation and justification of expenses was affected, among other things, by issues related to “editorial policy and institutional development processes,” the auditors said. Thus, the method of “distributing own revenues from commercial activity, amounting to 945.5 thousand lei, between the company and some employees created situations of inequality and a feeling of preferential treatment of labor remuneration”. And the tariffs for broadcasting and production services were set “without justification of real costs and real accounting”.
The financial misconduct of the company’s management was the existence of an illegal agreement “between the director of the company, on the one hand, and the president and secretary of the Board of Supervision and Development, on the other hand, and in connection with the bargaining practices and individual labor contracts between them.” As a result, the institution assumed payment obligations not provided for in the regulatory framework – about LE 364.3 thousand in case of termination of the CEO’s powers and about LE 1.46 million in case of termination of the individual labor contract before the end of the term of office.
Since the “parachute system” is not foreseen by the Moldovan regulatory framework in the field of labor relations, the auditors point this out as well as other violations.
“The absence of a specific procedure for determining the expenses related to audiovisual programs entailed the unjustified attribution to expenses of all costs incurred for the production of live programs – for a total amount of about 114.05 million lei, including the cost of consumed materials, costs related to labor remuneration, fees, social insurance contributions, travel expenses, etc.,” the Court of Accounts states.
