WILLEMSTAD – The government of Curaçao has chosen a confrontational line in its response to the report of the Algemene Rekenkamer Curaçao on the 2023 annual accounts. Minister of Finance Charles Cooper argues that the Audit Chamber’s report contains factual and material inaccuracies and that its working methods were insufficiently careful.
What makes this position remarkable is that the objections raised by the government are not new revelations. They are already extensively included in the report itself, discussed, weighed, and rejected by the Audit Chamber. The current dispute therefore does not stem from a lack of dialogue, but from a fundamental disagreement over interpretation, boundaries, and ultimately accountability.
At the heart of the conflict lies the processing of budget amendments. The Audit Chamber concludes that expenditures were made in 2023 without prior approval from the Curaçao Parliament, rendering them unlawful. The government counters by invoking the Landsverordening Comptabiliteit, arguing that approval via the adoption of the annual accounts is legally permissible. The Audit Chamber does not deny that this mechanism exists, but stresses that it is intended for exceptional cases after the final submission deadline of November 15, not as a structural method to retroactively legalize spending. This distinction is crucial. If every deviation can be approved after the fact, parliamentary budgetary control becomes hollow.
The same pattern emerges in the dispute over the renovation of the Tax Department building. The government argues that urgency and public health considerations justified deviating from procurement rules and assigning coordination to the Stichting Belasting Accountants Bureau. The Audit Chamber acknowledges that exceptions exist, but emphasizes that they must be applied restrictively and within statutory limits. SBAB, according to its statutes, simply does not have the authority to coordinate construction projects. Urgency, no matter how real, does not create legal competence where none exists.
The discussion around the role of SOAB is even more telling. The Audit Chamber found that SOAB managed public funds without a clear legal basis. SOAB and the government initially argued that the activities fell within its statutory framework. Later, SOAB repositioned itself as an external advisor rather than an internal accountant. Ironically, this shift strengthens the Audit Chamber’s conclusion, as it makes procurement law fully applicable and undermines the earlier justification. The finding remains intact.
Similar reasoning applies to the disputed indexation payments for 2019 and 2020, which were made in 2023 using what the Audit Chamber identifies as an advance on the 2024 budget. The government maintains that the 2023 budget already anticipated these payments. The Audit Chamber points out that the budget documentation does not support this claim and that Council of Ministers decisions explicitly refer to an advance on 2024. Once again, the conclusion stands.
The same legal logic underpins the disagreement over the Crime-Fighting Fund. While the government argues that the fund was established by national ordinance and that transfers are legally regulated, the Audit Chamber focuses on legal personality and responsibility. As long as the fund lacks independent legal status and falls under ministerial authority, its revenues must be included in the national accounts. This is not a political opinion, but a matter of accounting consistency and transparency.
Finally, the issue of gaming license revenues exposes the broader problem. More than 22 million guilders in income from the period 2011 to 2021 was booked as 2023 revenue. The government argues that income may be recognized in the year it becomes known. The Audit Chamber counters that under the Casino Ordinance the state is entitled to these revenues annually, meaning their existence was never unknown. To accept the government’s position would be to allow years of omission to be corrected without consequence in a single reporting year.
Taken together, these disputes reveal a consistent pattern. The government is not so much disproving facts as it is contesting the legal and administrative interpretation of those facts. The Audit Chamber, for its part, consistently anchors its conclusions in statutory logic, control principles, and the underlying purpose of public financial oversight.
In a constitutional system, an audit chamber is not an adversary to be outmaneuvered when its findings are uncomfortable. It is a safeguard meant to protect democratic control, legal certainty, and public trust. Disagreeing with findings is legitimate. Attempting to delegitimize the institution because its conclusions expose structural weaknesses is not.
If accountability only applies when it is politically convenient, it ceases to be accountability at all. For Curaçao’s public finances to move forward, the debate must shift from whether the Audit Chamber is too strict to whether the government is willing to accept the discipline that the law requires.
