The Prosecutor's Office has asked the Court of Auditors to open an investigation into the scandal of the extinct General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA). The objective, as has been advanced The National and sources from the Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed to ARA, is to clarify whether the agency dependent on the Department of Social Rights incurred "possible accounting liability" for irregularities in the payment of economic and housing benefits to young people who were formerly in care. All this, after the Audit Office detected more than 167 million unduly paid in the set of benefits between 2016 and 2022. Of these, 4.7 million corresponded to the undue benefits for young people who were formerly in care, which the Government has approved condone This Tuesday, a decision agreed upon between the PSC, ERC, and Comuns.

The Department of Social Rights improperly paid €167.56 million in economic benefits during the 2016-2024 period. This is confirmed by a report from the Audit Office released this Wednesday, which indicates that these improper payments "are not only due to administrative errors" but also to "structural problems of transparency and governance." Some of these payments, unclaimed and time-barred due to the administration's inaction in monitoring and controlling them, have resulted in "effective damage to public finances" and, therefore, could give rise to "acts that are administratively and judicially prosecuted." In this case, which primarily affects the guaranteed citizen income and long-term care benefits, legal proceedings could be opened against those responsible for improperly authorizing these payments. For its part, the Department of Social Rights maintains that €156 million of the €167 million has already been claimed from the beneficiaries of these benefits.