Estonian parliament to examine defence procurement and financial management

Estonia’s Anti-Corruption Select Committee will hold an extraordinary public session with members of the National Defence Committee on Thursday to examine findings in the National Audit Office’s report on defence-sector financial management and the transparency of donor-funded procurements, ERR reported.

The session begins at 10 a.m. and will be broadcast live on the ERR website.

Those invited include Kaimo Kuusk, chancellor of the Ministry of Defence; Kadri Peeters, the ministry’s deputy secretary for defence capabilities; Tiina Uudeberg, a former deputy secretary for defence planning at the ministry; Asko Kivinuk, deputy director general of the Centre for Defence Investment; Lieutenant General Andrus Merilo, commander of the Estonian Defence Forces; and Ines Metsalu-Nurminen, the National Audit Office’s auditor general.

Anastassia Kovalenko-Kõlvart, chair of the Anti-Corruption Select Committee, said the committee could not accept a situation in which important documents related to procurements worth 70 million euros could not be found in a reproducible format, and it was impossible to establish clearly how decisions were made and who was responsible for them.

“It has now been acknowledged that the established procurement procedures were not followed, but there is still no clear answer as to why they were bypassed and who made the relevant decisions. It has also not been possible to show through documents how specific contracting partners were selected, or whether and what kind of background checks were carried out on them,” Kovalenko-Kõlvart said.

She said the committee also needed explanations for conflicting accounts given by former leaders of the Ministry of Defence and the Centre for Defence Investment about the decision-making process.