The Prosecutor's Office asks the Court of Auditors to investigate irregularities in DGAIA aid.

BarcelonaThe 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.

In its report, which was made public in June and sent to the Court of Auditors, the Audit Office concluded that these improper payments were not "only due to administrative errors," but rather to "structural problems of transparency and governance," and warned that those responsible for the irregularities "could be prosecuted." The amounts subject to prosecution, however, would only be payments linked to time-barred cases, as these amounts are no longer recoverable and could therefore represent financial harm to the administration.

Social Rights, which maintains that 156 of the 167 million euros have already been claimed from the beneficiaries of these aid, decided last May reformulate the DGAIA in the wake of the scandal and created a new agency, the new Directorate General for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA), with greater management oversight tools but also fewer powers. In this sense, the DGPPIA will no longer have the financial powers that the DGAIA had until now: contracting foster care places in child care centers and processing the benefits received by young people who have left care. From now on, these functions will be carried out by a new deputy directorate general.

The ombudsman, Esther Giménez-Salinas, also warned in a report presented last week that outsourcing to make payments The situation for young people who have been in care has resulted in a lack of control, with delays in the application and withdrawal of economic benefits and in the management of foster care places, which have resulted in a violation of the rights of this group.

For the moment, the Department of Social Rights has not made any assessment of the Prosecutor's Office's decision, but the spokesperson for the council, Sílvia Paneque, has argued that the report by the Audit Office on the irregularities "is a snapshot of a specific moment, not the present, and has informed Marez. the remodeling of the DGAIA and the unification of all benefits under a single administrative unit, revoking the outsourcing of those paid to young people who have been in care.