The most important task that the Court of Accounts (CoA) must perform is to draft an annual report on the results of its auditing, which should also include its observations, its proposed reforms to the various laws and regulations with financial consequences, and feedback from the entities subject to auditing. The annual report’s importance lies in the fact that it is comprehensive and comes from the highest auditing body and should therefore enable citizens to perform their role in holding officials to account for public resources. This point is emphasized by Principle 4 of Value and Benefits of Supreme Audit Institutions – Making a Difference to the Lives of Citizens (INTOSAI-P 12), a pronouncement issued by the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions.

Despite the pivotal nature of this CoA function, the law regulating the CoA stipulates little in terms of how the report is drafted and adopted. This legislative gap has negatively affected the regularity of the CoA’s work in this regard, virtually depriving these reports of their desired role in activating institutional and social oversight. This we will detail below.

Are Tthe Reports Annual or Occasional?

The CoA published its first report in the appendix of Issue 18 of the Official Gazette, which was published on 30 April 1952. The report contained a study on the law governing the CoA issued on 16 January 1951, comparing it to similar legislations in countries with audit courts and proposing amendments to it. Hence, this report was more like a collection of proposals than an annual report. On 27 November 1965, the CoA delivered its first actual annual report to the president of the Republic. Thereafter, it continued issuing its reports until the 1975-1990 war broke out. Although the CoA ceased issuing reports during the war, its first report after the war (1992) was essentially a review of the difficulties it faced as a result, in particular, of its hemorrhaging of human resources. We then had to wait until 1996, when the annual report for 1995 was issued, for the CoA to resume issuing its annual reports semiregularly (albeit with some delay). While the reports were issued very regularly during the 2001-2005 period, their regularity thereafter declined significantly amidst the political crisis sparked by the killing of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. After 2016, the reports stopped completely. A close examination of the years that the reports covered and the dates they were issued leads to the following conclusions:

• Since the war ended in 1990, the CoA has published 13 reports encompassing 21 of the 33 years. In other words, the CoA covered just two thirds of this period in its reports. The reports halted for three eras: the first half of the 1990s, when the CoA was in the process of rebuilding its capacities and resources; 2016-2019 (under CoA President Ahmad Hamdan); and 2020-today (under CoA President Mohamad Badran), an era that began following the eruption of the financial and economic crisis. The number of years for which no reports were drafted would have been higher had the CoA not resorted many times to issuing reports summarizing multiple years of work. Of the 13 reports, only eight cover a single year, whereas two cover two years and three cover three years. A committee for drafting annual reports was appointed in mid-2024 to rectify the delay in annual reports, but it has not commenced work, and there is concern that the Israeli aggression that began in late September 2024 may prevent it from doing so.
• Besides the failure to issue reports for certain years, there is also a large discrepancy in the dates that the reports were issued. Out of the 21 years covered by the CoA’s reports, just three were covered by a report issued within six months of their end, and 11 were covered by a report issued within one year. On the other hand, the report for 2013 was issued more than four years after the year ended (it was issued in 2018 and covered 2013, 2014, and 2015). The average gap between the end of a year and the issuance of the corresponding report was increased by the popularity of the practice of issuing reports covering not one year but two or three, as previously explained.

While the average gap between the end of a year and the issuance of the corresponding report is 19 months, a large difference exists between the average gap for the years 1995-2005 (approximately 10 months) and the average gap for the years 2006-2015 (approximately 30 months, i.e. three times longer). This figure is a clear indication of the deterioration in the CoA’s performance after 2005, when the political crisis sparked by Hariri’s assassination began. During this period, the CoA’s presidency went vacant from 2006 to 2010, and the chamber presidencies went vacant from 2006 to 2019.

The law is silent about the date the annual report should be issued (although it requires that the report be issued annually), and judges we interviewed told us that the CoA has no internal statute imposing any deadline in this regard. Some of the annual reports mention a delay in their adoption and record various justifications. For example, the reports on 2003 and 2004 attribute the delay to the quantity and quality of the tasks that the CoA performs, which exceed its human resources, and to the numerous procedures that precede its adoption. These reports were issued within 9 months and 11 months of the end of the relevant year, i.e. approximately half the average gap for the entire post-war period. 

Other reports, such as the report covering 2006, 2007, and 2008, attribute the delay to the vacancy of the CoA’s presidency and chamber presidencies, arguing that these vacancies prevented the Full Bench (the body entitled to adopt the report) from assembling. However, this argument is not entirely convincing because if the CoA’s presidency is vacant, the acting CoA president can call the Full Bench to convene, as indeed occurred in 2004 and 2007 for the purpose of adopting the 2003 and 2005 reports. Conversely, other reports make no mention whatsoever of the fact that a delay occurred and hence provide no justification for it. These reports include those issued more than four years after the year they cover, such as the report issued in 2018.

This delay could cause the reports to lose their intended function by divorcing the CoA’s observations and proposals for the administrations and institutions regarding certain projects and transactions from their context. This is especially true when significant changes have occurred in the legal, administrative, and financial conditions.

Making this delay even graver, the administrations supply the CoA with the accounts that it is supposed to subject to judicial audit late to begin with. For example, the report for 2013-2015 states that the CoA issued judicial auditing decisions on accounts from the Chiyah and Dekwaneh municipalities, the Council for Reconstruction and Development, the Basil Fuleihan Institute of Finance, Ogero, and the Ministry of Agriculture, among other entities, that date back to 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, and 2003, respectively. Hence, not only are reports issued late in relation to the years they cover (if they are issued at all), but they also include observations about the administration’s performance many years earlier.

Drafting and Adopting the Reports

The CoA regulation law does not define how the annual reports are drafted. As explained earlier, it only stipulates that the report is drafted annually and adopted by the Full Bench after the public prosecutor is heard.

Conventionally, the reports are drafted by a committee composed of several judges and presided over by the CoA president. While the law is silent about which party is responsible for forming this committee – specifically, whether it is the CoA’s Council or its president – in mid-2024 current CoA President Badran appointed a committee for drafting the annual report without consulting the Council.

In any case, the CoA president’s role remains pivotal given the absence of an internal statute defining how tasks are distributed within the CoA in this regard. This figure is responsible for corresponding with the entities subject to oversight to obtain their feedback and calling the CoA’s Full Bench to convene to adopt the report. This pivotal role afforded to the CoA president inevitably affects the regularity of the reports and the dates of their issuance, as confirmed earlier. While the reports were issued regularly during the eras of CoA presidents Afif al-Muqaddam and Rasheed Hoteit, there was a significant decline in this regard during the era of the post-2005 CoA presidents, especially after the practice of reporting on three years at once became common. Despite the pivotal nature of this role, the CoA is still obligated to issue an annual report, even when its presidency is vacant. This requirement led to the issuance of the reports for 2003 and 2005 while the presidency was vacant, as previously explained, although the CoA failed to take the same step in later years under the same condition.

Also remarkable in this regard is that the reports include no information about the committee that drafted them or the methodology it adopted. Nor do they mention the deliberations that occurred inside the CoA’s Full Bench assemblies or any dissenting opinions. The only exception is the report for 1992, which mentioned that Judge Dib Rashid dissented without publishing the substance or text of his dissent.

Moreover, while the reports note the CoA’s commitment to notifying the administrations and bodies concerned, and granting them a one-month deadline to deliver their feedback so that it can be published with the report, a close examination reveals that these administrations and bodies rarely engage, whether positively or negatively, with the CoA’s observations. For example, the reports for 2002, 2003, and 2004 show that the Prime Minister’s Office (to which the CoA is administratively subordinate) sent no response to the observations that the CoA included in any of them. Similarly, the Ministry of Finance sent no response to the observations in 2002 and 2004.

The 2002 report was sent to 13 public bodies and administrations, and ministries, and the only response received was from the National Higher Conservatory of Music. This absence of responses has several negative implications. Firstly, the Prime Minister’s Office apparently pays no attention to the CoA’s comments. Secondly, the party primarily concerned with the CoA’s auditing, namely the Ministry of Finance, does not engage with it. The report contains no justification for the lack of responses.

The Report’s Content

All the reports generally comply with Article 47 of the CoA Regulation Law, which stipulates that the CoA must cover the results of its auditing quantitatively and qualitatively and include its proposed reforms to the various laws and regulations with financial consequences. The organization and level of detail differed from report to report.

However, a significant number of the reports go beyond the conception set out in the law and address the issues concerning the CoA and its resources. In particular, the report for 1992 is essentially a description of the CoA’s post-war situation and the means whereby its operations could be restored. In this regard, one of the most important parts reads:

“Indeed, here it [i.e. the CoA] is rising above all the obstacles and difficulties, both external and internal. Besides the lingering effects of the exceptional circumstances in the post-war period, which have had an obvious negative impact on administrative and financial performance for various reasons, there is also an enormous shortage in the CoA’s human resources. The cadre stipulated for the CoA since 1959 includes 12 judges, 35 controllers, and 24 administrative employees, but the actual cadre is now limited to a scant few in each of these categories due to resignations and retirements”.

The reports for the years 1995-1998 followed the same trend, each addressing the issue of the vacancies in the CoA’s cadre and the need to fill them so that it can perform its duties fully. The warning about the danger posed by the vacancies was accompanied by practical measures to fill the vacant positions, as evidenced by the fact that several exams were held during this period for this purpose. However, this trend thereafter declined – particularly in the three three-year reports covering the years 2006-2015 – even though the vacancy problem became a Parliamentary issue from 2012 onwards and the CoA’s presidency and chamber presidencies became vacant. Hence, these reports give readers the impression that the CoA faces no issue related to its organization or human resources.

On another note, the CoA does not merely deliver technical observations but also endeavors to debate ministries, particularly the Ministry of Finance, on their public financial and taxation policy. For example, the report for 2006, 2007, and 2008 features a debate between the CoA and the Ministry of Finance about the bulk of taxes being indirect taxes and whether this undermines tax fairness. In the same report, the CoA also warned about the dominance of running expenditure over the budget (90%), with just 10% of expenditure allocated for investments.

Yet remarkably, none of the CoA reports issued after 2005 warn of the continued constitutional violations represented by the political authority’s failure to adopt a public budget for any year between 2006 and 2016 and the perpetuation of the “provisional twelfth” rule [whereby the government continues spending in accordance with an outdated budget]. Rather, the CoA normalized these violations, stating in its report for 2006-2008 that its observations concerning budget implementation would not differ from those it delivered in its report for 2004 as no public budgets had been adopted for these years and the provisional twelfth rule was still in effect. Likewise, none of these reports raise any objection to the tardiness of the Ministry of Finance or other administrations when it comes to sending task orders.

Presenting and Publishing the Reports

After the annual report is adopted by the Full Bench, the CoA Regulation Law requires the CoA president to present it to the political authorities, specifically to the president of the Republic and to Parliament so that it can be distributed to the MPs. Parliament’s Finance and Budget Committee and the other relevant committees must then set sessions for studying the report and interviewing the CoA president (or someone he or she delegates) and, where necessary, representatives of the relevant public administrations and bodies to obtain any necessary clarifications.

In the same vein, the law requires that the report be presented to other oversight bodies, namely the Civil Service Council and the Central Inspection Bureau. This stipulation can be understood as an invitation to these two bodies to engage with the CoA’s recommendations and observations and take any necessary measures concerning the administrations that they jointly monitor with the CoA.

The obligation imposed on the CoA to present its report to these authorities and bodies is not a formality. Rather, it suggests a legislative desire to ensure that the CoA’s recommendations are followed up on and, most importantly, to achieve complementarity in oversight work between the CoA and Parliament (specifically the Finance and Budget Committee) and between the CoA and the other oversight bodies. From this perspective, the people in charge of the CoA are not the only ones responsible for the non-issuance and irregularity of reports. Rather, so too are these other authorities (particularly the Finance and Budget Committee), which registered no effort to spur the CoA to fulfill its duties in this regard.

The CoA Regulation Law emphasizes not only that the reports must be presented to the aforementioned authorities and bodies but also that the public has a right to view them. It does this by stipulating that the reports must be published in the Official Gazette. This requirement suggests that the legislature wants the CoA’s report to be a tool both for the political authorities and oversight bodies and for citizen oversight over the performance of all state institutions, in keeping with Principle 4 of INTOSAI-P 12. The CoA’s role in enabling citizens to hold officials accountable for public resources renders it an essential component of any democratic system as accountability, transparency, and integrity constitute indispensable parts of any stable democracy. In this regard, the delayed publication – or nonpublication – of the reports in the Official Gazette further undermines citizens’ right to view them, which is already weakened by their delayed drafting and irregularity. For example, the report for 1996 and 1997 was not published in the Official Gazette until 29 January 1999 even though it was adopted by the CoA’s Full Bench on 22 July 1998. Other reports, such as the three-year reports for 2010-2012 and 2013-2015, were not published at all in the Official Gazette.

This article is an edited translation from Arabic.