SLOVAKIA will not pay for the development of the KONS tax processing system developed for the tax administration, according to Finance Minister Peter Kažimír, who considers it a loss of €10 million for the state, the TASR newswire reported. The launch of the new system resulted in several problems for the tax offices at the beginning of the year.
“Out of this €10 million, €6.3 million is already gone because it has already been paid,” said the minister as quoted by TASR, adding that the ministry is determined not to pay the remaining sum.
“We have established that laws of the Slovak Republic were violated – at least twice,” he added.
Kažimír also said that under the previous government, the new information system violated the Act on Budgetary Rules and the Act on Public Administration Information Systems.
“We are also not willing to pay because the end result of services rendered is not even a system but merely more or less non-functional services that were ordered based on shady [contractual] addendums with IBM,” he said.
The information system KONS was ordered by the former finance minister via an addendum to a contract with IBM, one which put the client - the Slovak Republic - at a severe disadvantage, according to Financial Administration President František Imrecze.
“KONS was purchased as if the Financial Administration developed it itself and the provider bore no responsibility over the system whatsoever,” said Imcrecze, as quoted by TASR.
