The development of the KONS information system for the Finance Administration, launched under the former government, will mean the loss of €10 million for the state, Finance Minister Peter Kažimír said at a press conference on Wednesday, August 1. In spite of this high price, it is not likely to ever be used.
"Out of this €10 million, €6.3 is already gone because it was paid already," said minister as quoted by the TASR newswire. The Finance Ministry has received invoices for the remaining €3.7 million. According to Kažimír, however, the ministry is determined not to pay the remaining sum and thus decrease the state loss.
"We've established that laws of the Slovak Republic were violated – at least twice," he added. Under the previous government, the new information system violated the Act on Budgetary Rules and Act on Public Administration Information Systems, Kažimír alleged. "We're 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 addendums with IBM," he said.
According to Financial Administration President Frantisek Imrecze, the information system KONS was ordered by the former Finance Ministry via an addendum to a contract with IBM, one which put the client - the Slovak Republic - at a severe disadvantage. "KONS was purchased as if the Financial Administration developed it itself and the provider bore no responsibility over the system whatsoever," added Imcrecze.
(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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