Collection of travel and other expenses that were never made, daily use of the institution's canteen, despite receiving "a lunch allowance paid for the highest gauge", self-serving remuneration paid without the necessary communication to Social Security and the maintenance of a administrators as an employee of the Irene Rolo Foundation, despite having long ago reached retirement age.
These were some of the accusations made by Macário Correia, outgoing president of the IPSS from Tavira, to his colleagues in the administration of the institution..
The former mayor was president of the Irene Rolo Foundation for about three years, by appointment of the Social Security, the institution's main funder. Last week, it went public, through a post on the social network Facebook entitled «Serving or using solidarity, denounce situations of abuse that he had "just discovered", which, according to his accounts, will have cost "about half a million euros" to the institution in recent decades.
Claiming not to agree with what is allegedly happening in this IPSS, he submitted his resignation to Social Security, to whom he denounced the situation.
Contacted by Sul informação, Macário Correia reaffirmed his accusations and guaranteed that when he accepted the position, he was told “that everything was done on the basis of volunteer work” and, as such, he never charged anything for his work on behalf of the institution. But, he said, this was not the case for all members of the administration, which besides himself, is composed of two other people, who have already held the positions for a long time.
According to the former president of the Chambers of Tavira and Faro, one of the directors, an octogenarian, was kept as an employee of the institution until last year, despite having «reached full retirement age in 2001». “It remained until the end of 2016, paid by the Foundation, when she was 80 years old and grudgingly asked to retire from her position as an employee of the institution. It received around 340 euros from the Foundation, which could have been avoided, without any harm to the Foundation. No other public or private institution would maintain this situation with such an avoidable loss of resources», considered Macário Correia.
“The administration is practically immovable. There are no elections or General Assembly [nominations are the responsibility of Social Security]. The person concerned has been in the administration for 35 years and was also an employee. For 20 years, she received around 20 thousand euros a year, when she could already be retired», she said. The situation only changed due to pressure from you and against the will of the association's administrator, he assured.
Another situation denounced by the outgoing president was that of a monthly sum of 450 euros that was paid to his predecessor and to the secretary of the board, who is still in office. The decisions were taken by the foundation's administrators "in 2002 and 2004", but, claimed Macário Correia, they were never communicated to Social Security or the Supervisory Board, as would be mandatory.
Despite admitting that, if it had been communicated, “the remuneration was legally possible under the statutory conditions”, it argues that only the previous president “had significant travels”, which would justify his reimbursement. "These decisions, both, entailed expenses of around 100 euros," he said.
These situations only came to the attention of Macário Correia “very recently”, despite having been the president of the institution for three years. «Since I arrived, I have devoted my time to new projects and new skills. I haven't been asking questions about the past», he justified.
But, “not long ago, when I was signing a set of checks, I came across one in the name of one of the people in the administration. I went to look at the corresponding expense sheet and realized they were fallacious. When I asked what that was, I was told it had been like that for years,” he added.
From that moment on, he researched and found the other situations he described in that communication and, later, in a second post on Facebook, where he explains why it took so long to deal with the situation.
O Sul Informação contacted the Irene Rolo Foundation, which says it is preparing a response to the accusations that were made by its former president and will publish it in due course. Our newspaper has also asked Social Security whether it was aware of the situation and what measures it intends to take, but it did not receive an answer until the publication of this article.
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