Our View: Scrapping the charity does not end the transparency questions
After the uproar about the complete lack of transparency at the first lady’s personal charity vehicle for needy university students – the Social Support Body – the government has decided to scrap it. On Thursday the finance ministry tabled two bills in the House. The first will abolish the body, while the second provides for the opening of a bank account at the Central Bank, in which all donations intended for students from needy families would be deposited.
All donations received would have to be approved by the finance minister and would be given out by the ministry’s Grants and Allowance Service, based on criteria governed by regulations. The money in the Central Bank account would be used exclusively for providing eligible students with additional assistance, over and above the annual grant they receive. The most interesting part, for donations above €20,000, the donor would be obliged to give written authorisation for the disclosure of his/her name as well as the amount. For unknown reasons, for donations of less than €20,000, the contributors name would be kept secret.
This is an improvement on what was happening with the Social Support Body – the funding of which was a carefully guarded secre – raising justified concerns about conflict of interest and corruption at the highest level of government. These concerns remain, considering the government is obdurately refusing to release any information about the identity of the donors to first lady’s charity which amounted to €6.4m since 2023. The government also recruited the assistance of the attorney-general, who opined that disclosing names would be a violation of personal data protection.
This is an astonishing opinion, as it effectively protects corrupt dealings. The law, according to this opinion, is outlawing transparency and protecting a business that could have made a big contribution to the Social Support Body in exchange for a government favour or a public contract. The infamous video, in which two close associates of the president were filmed proposing a contribution to the Support Body, in exchange for access to the president, indicated that not all dealings were honest and above board. If they were, the president, who claims to be a champion of transparency and accountability, would not be insisting on keeping all names secret.
This behaviour gives the impression he has something to hide. If he did not he would not have gone to the attorney-general to seek legal backing for preventing any transparency about the operation of the support body, which had turned into a personal charity of the president’s wife, a civil servant, who is not permitted by the regulations of the civil service, to engage in fund-raising, even if it was for a worthy cause.
The new arrangement proposed by the government is a crude attempt to put an end to any talk about the suspect dealings surrounding the support body, which betrayed the president’s total disregard for transparency and accountability.