Centre Party has retrospectively added €7,205.38 worth of donations and membership fees into its register. From that, over €2,100 came from the fist and close to €3,300 from the second quarters of 2012. For the most part, we are talking about one or two digit sums on money.
An example here being Parliament Member Mihhail Stalnuhhin of the Centre Party, paying, in the first half of last year, €2,843.57 in membership fees – over a third of the sum total later entered into the register; in the first quarter, Mr Stalnuhhin paid €1,139.6 in five instalments, in the second €1,703.97 in seven instalments.
As explained by Centre Party press secretary Taavi Pukk, the party’s central bureau had received specifications regarding membership fees and donations from different departments and regional offices, added to the reports of the corresponding time period pursuant to Political Parties Act. «Our organisation being large and people doing their job voluntarily, in their free time, data comes in step by step,» he said.
Parliamentary committee responsible for supervision of the financing of political parties is supposed to discuss the move by Centre Party at its session, tomorrow.
Retrospective entries have been made by Centre Party in prior years, as well. Not always have problems been avoided.
In March 2012, for instance, the party entered 252,000 Estonian kroons (€16,105.7) into its report, given to it in October 2010, according to documents. The Centre Party press secretary back then saying that confusion was caused by an error committed by an accountant, the donations actually having been already registered in the supplementary expenditure report for European Parliament elections.
The supervisory committee, however, found that the donations added to the register had been omitted from the party’s annual report for 2010, and thereby also from the party’s accounting.
At the time, Public Prosecutor’s Office suspected that the Centre Party secretary-general, Riigikogu member Priit Toobal falsified, both in the last quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, five Centre Party revenue vouchers regarding a total of €11,030.28 worth of cash donations.
As, according to the suspicion, he admitted cash for the party on the basis of falsified vouchers, the origin of which was unknown, prosecutor’s office wished to also file an accusation towards Mr Toobal regarding breach of limitations set to economic activities and assets of a political parties. Mr Toobal denied any such fraud.
The prosecutor’s office, however, was unable to file the accusation towards Mr Toobal, as the Chancellor of Justice did not agree to waive the immunity of Mr Toobal as Member of Parliament, referring to the constitution.