#TrainingAVAF

The Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency participated, on April 17, in the “Forum on transparency in public procurement of the Local Administration” held in Madrid, promoted and organized by the Laboratorio de la Contratación, in collaboration with the Madrid City Council.

One of the main reasons for holding this Forum was to address, from a purely practical sphere, the most relevant aspects and challenges of local public procurement, both from the perspective of Local Administration and private operators, as well as, the formulas and tools available to be able to undertake it and provide citizens with services of the highest possible quality.

In the Forum, the legislative news and the news of the risk areas in terms of local public procurement were presented, the preparation of the Check list as an essential tool for the preparation of the specifications, underfinancing and increased costs of contracting will be discussed. local government, as well as the detection and correction of fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest in the local Administration.

It was attended by speakers with extensive knowledge in the field such as contracting specialists, elected directors, general secretaries and presidents who are part of organizations such as Advisory Councils, the Administrative Court of Contracts, or the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency.

The inaugural session of the Forum was in charge of Mrs. Silvia Saavedra – Councilor for Territorial Coordination, Transparency and Citizen Participation in the Madrid City Council.

The representative of the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency, Mrs. Irene Bravo Rey, shared a table with Mr. Alfonso Arévalo Gutiérrez, President of the Administrative Court of Contracts of the Madrid Assembly, and Mrs. Sara Aranda Plaza, General Coordinator of Districts, Transparency and Citizen Participation in Madrid City Council, and focused his intervention on the issues that were raised, among which it is worth highlighting the list of the main risks contrary to the structure that usually arise during the life of a contract (conflict of interest, abuse of the figure of unjust enrichment, lack of planning of the contractual activity or lack of transparency) highlighting that such risks and factors may be useful for each institution to prepare its own catalogs or self-assessment of risks.

She stressed the collaboration protocols that are being signed between the AVAF and certain Valencian public institutions, to facilitate compliance with state and regional legal obligations (especially those of the new Law 2/2023 on informants and the Autonomous Law of the Community of Valenciana of Transparency and Good Governance), contributing to the implementation in each entity of separate integrity frameworks.

Her speech ended by recalling that the public service mission of any public entity is the achievement of the general interest, and must protect all kinds of public funds from any kind of irregularity, and not limit itself to protecting only funds from the EU from eminently criminal irregularities, articulating preventive frameworks as content of its own integrity plan and/or plan of anti-fraud measures. For this reason, he pointed out, the Agency approved the AVAF Guide: The Public Integrity Plan: Roadmap and Facilitating Annexes which, together with other materials, can be consulted on its website.