"There is no procedure related to the granting of credit" and the payment management "exists", but it is "very general", its compliance being at the expense of the financial director. That is what a report prepared by the director of Customer Experience, Control and Audit of the Tourist Centers points out, which recognizes that in recent years the "related to the financial field" have been "eliminated" from the CACT's "process map", because "more importance was given to the processes directly related to the client, that is, the provision of the service itself." And all this when the defaults to the Centers have exceeded two million euros, without most of that debt having even been claimed.
This report was requested by the new president of the Cabildo, María Dolores Corujo, after Coalición Canaria made public the debt that a specific company maintains with the CACT, of which the partner of the current CEO, Juan Félix Eugenio, is a partner. However, as Corujo already revealed in the last Plenary, that debt is neither the only one nor the one with the highest amount, although it is the only one that the previous management of the Centers claimed through the courts.
The rest "was allowed to grow and it was not even attempted to claim", they emphasize from the government group, which has made public the content of this report on the "absence of debt and credit risk management". In total, they point out, in recent years more than two million euros have accumulated in "debts of difficult collection", and more than half (1,239,005 euros) belongs to private companies, having initiated actions only against one of them.
"At the will of the financial director"
"The default management procedure was executed at the will of the CACT's financial director. And although the report indicates that there is a process that can be started when debt is generated, it has only been used once: in the case of Customer Travel", they emphasize from the government group.
In addition, they question that the so-called "procedure maps" of the CACTs focused on the "customer experience" and not on avoiding defaults to the public entity. In this regard, the director of Customer Experience, Control and Audit who prepared the report justifies it by pointing out that audits were carried out to verify that the processes were complied with. However, the government group highlights that this evaluation was carried out by "external quality agencies focused on customers, but who are not auditors".
In fact, the report itself recognizes that no objections were raised. "In none of the reports issued by the auditors in the years of certification have non-conformities related to the financial field been issued. They have been more related to customer-focused processes, guaranteeing the quality of the product and service provided", he points out in this regard, adding that "this may be for two reasons: because at the time of the audit no evidence was found that the procedure was not being carried out properly or because in the sampling carried out the mentioned procedures were not chosen".
"Every travel agency had the right to work with the CACT"
Within that "very general" procedure for controlling defaults, the opinion indicates that the debt is classified by the time elapsed and not by the amount, which is not even taken into account. Thus, when the default accumulates between 60 and 90 days, the protocol establishes that "a phone call is made to warn of the need for collection"; when it exceeds 90 days "a letter is sent warning of the cut-off of credit"; and when it exceeds 180 days "the credit is cut off and legal advice is resorted to", the entire process depending on the financial director.
However, the new government group insists that this did not happen with most of the debts and reiterates that action was only taken with one. In addition, they deny that it was a socialist councilor who granted the credit to Eugenio's partner's company a decade ago, since the report itself indicates that until 2012 all credits to travel agencies were granted automatically. "Every travel agency had the right to work with the CACT", specifies the opinion, which explains that this implies working on credit, since the invoices for the tickets are issued the month after the visits are made.
Finally, regarding the state of the economic department of the Centers, they also question that there is currently no regulated procedure for delivering invoices. "Today there are invoices that are even delivered by hand", they emphasize.
