WILLEMSTAD – A newly submitted analysis has raised serious legal and governance questions about the expanding role of the Stichting Overheidsaccountantsbureau (SOAB) in the execution of additional government tasks, warning that the current approach may undermine established principles of financial management, accountability, and oversight.
The analysis, authored by former Court of Audit auditor and financial expert Luigi A. Faneyte, examines where the legal chain of authority surrounding SOAB breaks down when the organization moves beyond its traditional control and audit role and becomes involved in executive and managerial activities within government ministries. Faneyte currently serves as a parliamentary staff member for the PAR in the Curaçao Parliament.
At the core of the analysis is the question of where, from a legal standpoint, the authority chain breaks, and what risks this creates for ministerial responsibility, board liability at SOAB, budgetary legality, and future judgments by the Rekenkamer Curaçao.
According to the analysis, Curaçao’s system of financial management is grounded in the Landsverordening Financieel Beheer (Lfb), which clearly assigns responsibility for financial management, execution, and payments to ministries. Ministers remain politically and legally responsible for the execution of budgets and the lawful spending of public funds, even when tasks are outsourced. Within this framework, SOAB is formally designated as an internal audit and control body, tasked with oversight, audits, and assessments of financial management, rather than execution.
The legal problem, the analysis argues, arises when SOAB is assigned executive responsibilities such as managing funds, carrying out payments, maintaining project administrations, monitoring projects, or filling capacity gaps within ministries. In such cases, SOAB effectively shifts from being a controller to becoming an executor, while simultaneously retaining its audit and oversight role. This convergence of functions, according to Faneyte, represents a fundamental breach of the principle of separation of duties and lacks an explicit legal or statutory basis.
The analysis outlines that, in the standard legal chain, ministries execute projects and manage funds under ministerial responsibility, while SOAB performs independent control. In practice, however, this chain is being altered, with SOAB carrying out management and execution tasks and subsequently being placed in a position to review its own work. This, the author concludes, is the precise point at which the authority chain breaks.
From a ministerial perspective, the analysis warns that responsibility for unlawful expenditures, improper management, or budget overruns cannot be transferred to SOAB. Ministers remain fully accountable and may face political consequences, parliamentary scrutiny, and corrective findings from oversight institutions if expenditures are later deemed unlawful.
The risks extend to SOAB itself. When its board allows the organization to take on tasks beyond its statutory mandate, questions may arise about unauthorized actions, the erosion of its independence, and potential governance liability. Such developments could lead to reputational damage and undermine trust in SOAB’s role as an objective control institution.
Budgetary legality is also highlighted as a key concern. For public spending to be considered lawful, it must be carried out by the competent authority, follow the correct procedures, serve the intended purpose, and rest on a clear legal basis. Expenditures routed through SOAB for executive tasks may, according to the analysis, be judged procedurally unlawful or insufficiently controllable, potentially resulting in negative legality assessments and future correction measures.
Looking ahead, the analysis anticipates that the Court of Audit is likely to continue flagging the mixing of control and execution functions and to demand clearer legal boundaries. This could ultimately lead to recommendations for legislative amendments or a formal restriction of SOAB’s role if the current practice persists.
In his concluding assessment, Faneyte states that the legal core of the issue lies in the absence of an explicit legal foundation for combining execution and control within a single organization. Once those functions converge, risks arise simultaneously for ministers, SOAB’s board, the legality of public spending, and future audit judgments.
The analysis adds a new dimension to the ongoing public and parliamentary debate about the allocation of additional funds to SOAB and the broader question of how Curaçao safeguards financial governance, accountability, and oversight within its public administration.