National audit office wants info from LRT before deciding on audit

Auditor General Arūnas Dulkys says that the office will decide whether or what kind of audit to perform after receiving the information.

“You won’t find a specific audit in our program yet, but we have now started our own independent risk assessment. In the near future, we will ask the LRT Council for additional information,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

According to Dulkys, the information concerns recommendations issued in recent years by external evaluators, internal audit findings and the risks identified by the the LRT Council’s administrative commission. The council will also be asked to provide information on the current internal control system.

“We need these things so as to decide how we can be useful, because there are different types of audits and each has a different depth,” he said.

The Seimas set up last week a special commission for parliamentary scrutiny of LRT, saying that it will help to find out if the public broadcaster properly spends budget money. Lawmakers note that the LRT Council failed to provide some of the information they had requested, citing confidentiality clauses in its contracts as the reason, and that the answers it did give require detailed analysis.

Critics describe the establishment of the commission as an effort to put pressure on the media and take revenge on journalists asking the ruling Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union uncomfortable questions.