The Vila Real de Santo António Chamber (VRSA) will reactivate the Urban Management Society (SGU) to pay off the «huge and irresponsible debt» of this municipal company, whose internalization in the Chamber was made unfeasible on Thursday by the Court of Auditors.
No report of an audit carried out on the reopening of SGU's accounts from 2016 to 2018, within the scope of the review process of VRSA's Municipal Support Plan (PAM), the court identified «situations of violation of law and distortion of accounts, making them present positive results to rule out the legal scenario of dissolution of the company».
«Taking into account the observations and conclusions, the Court sent the Report to the Public Prosecutor's Office to determine responsibilities and makes several recommendations, in particular, with a view to reviewing the legal framework applicable to local companies, in order to promote a more efficient use of public resources and the most effective pursuit of their respective purposes", announced the TC.
Along the way, it refused to grant a visa to the PAM review, requested by the Chamber in 2019, something that was already expected by the municipality, which did not wait for the report to propose to the Municipal Assembly the annulment of the internalization of the SGU and the reactivation of the company, which ended up being approved. .
With this decision, explained Álvaro Araújo, president of the VRSA Chamber, to the Sul Informação, the municipality will be able to renegotiate SGU's debt of 72 million euros and start paying it, at the same time as “clearing” this “weight” from the Chamber's accounts, which should even allow the municipality to achieve the financial rebalance that has long been looking for and freed from the yoke of the Municipal Support Fund.
To do this, the municipality will have to provide the municipal company, which was closed down years ago, with assets that allow it to have revenue to pay these debts.
In 2021, when the socialist Álvaro Araújo won the Chamber from the PSD, which had governed there since 2005, a request for review of the Municipal Support Plan had already been submitted by the previous executive, in order to support the internalization of the SGU and assumption, by the Chamber, of the high debt that it accumulated, in order to continue the process of financial restructuring of the municipality, which had been dragging on for many years.
One of the consequences of non-payment of this debt, as our newspaper reported, were the seizure requests made by SGU creditors, which led to a real risk of the Chamber lose some of its heritage, with the City Council building at its head.
«When we arrived, we found the absence of a visa from the Court of Auditors in relation to this operation strange and asked for a meeting. The president of the TC informed us, at that meeting, that the process had been archived due to a lack of response from the municipality, which we were surprised at,” said Álvaro Araújo.
At that same meeting, the president of the Court of Auditors, after consulting the services, revealed that the email with the request for a response “had been sent to Conceição Cabrita's email. After we informed that the former president had not even finished her term and that no one had access to that email», the court agreed to «reactivate the PAM review request».
However, and after several requests for “documentation and justification” from the court, the current executive “began to realize that it would be difficult to approve” the review of the plan.
«We were asked, for example, to make individual requests for each of the contractual position processes for the various loans that SGU made [already due], requests that were successively rejected», he said.
Later, as stated in the Court of Auditors' report, illegalities were discovered related to the company's accounts and various irregularities in the company's loan processes.
«In view of these facts, and as we already knew that the report would be in this direction, because of the exchange of information and requests we had with the Court of Auditors, we took a proposal to annul the decision to reopen SGU's accounts to the last Municipal Assembly », said Álvaro Araújo.
The reactivation of the SGU was also approved, which will be responsible for the management of some municipal equipment, namely “the campsite, the Motorhome Service Areas and paid parking”, among others.
Another revenue that will allow SGU to fulfill its future debt payment plan, while financing its regular operation and maintaining the resources that will be allocated to it, is that relating to VRSA's water rent.
«We are talking about income in the order of 4 million euros per year, which is enough to cover future expenses», considered Álvaro Araújo.
This was one of the three solutions on the table, after the Court of Auditors' approval.
There was the possibility of presenting a new PAM - a possibility "which was considered, after a meeting with the Government and various entities" -, but Álvaro Araújo and his team considered that this would not allow overcoming the problems with the SGU and the since it would be necessary to obtain it for its internalization.
Another hypothesis was to move towards the insolvency of the municipal company, but the Chamber did not want to take “the risk of placing all of our assets in the hands of an insolvency manager”.
The Court of Auditors' report could also mean the opening of legal proceedings against the company's former administrators and former municipal officials.
And, he warns, reports from other entities will soon be published, such as the General Inspectorate of Finance, on the management of the SGU, «which are not at all sympathetic to previous administrations».
“But that is not our concern. Obviously, if we find any irregularities, we will report it, as is our obligation. But our focus is not on the past, it is on solving the problems of the people of Vilarreal», concluded the president of the VRSA Chamber.
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