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23. 10. 09. - 13:00

Audit Office to check Skylink cost overruns

By Lisa Chapman

A special team from the Audit Office (RH) will begin checking through cost overruns at the new Skylink terminal at Vienna International Airport (VIA) today (Fri).

RH President Josef Moser said a change in the law had finally made an audit possible and that he had already been in touch with VIA officials about an inspecation.

He said the six-person team would include experts on building construction, civil engineering, jurists and accountants. RH has 250 examiners at its disposal.

Moser said it was impossible to predict how long the audit would take since that would depend on what the team found during its work.

He added he would make a preliminary report about the audit available to VIA and its chief stockholders, the provinces of Vienna and Lower Austria, for their comments, which would be used in a final report.

If the audit began on schedule, Moser said, he would withdraw his request for clarification of RH’s competence by the Constitutional Court (VfGH) next week. VIA had denied RH permission to conduct an audit of the cost overruns last summer on the grounds that it was unclear whether RH had the authority to do so.

Moser said a change in the law on 19 October had provided for RH audits of firms that were de facto controlled by the state through financial or other economic or organisational measures. That was the case in regard to VIA, he claimed, since Vienna and Lower Austria together had a 40 per cent interest in it.

The RH president denied the audit would overlap with the investigation of Skylink by the public prosecutor’s office in Korneuburg, Lower Austria. "We have a different focus," he explained.

Skylink’s cost, originally estimated to be 400 million Euros, have sky-rocketed to 830 million Euros.

Meanwhile VIA officials recently said they were in "positive" talks with firms about further work on construction of Skylink. VIA suspended the work earlier this year after news of the huge cost overruns.

They added, however, that it was too soon to say when construction would resume, adding there was no indication that Skylink’s cost would exceed the projected sum of 830 million Euros.

The officials said they planned to have the work finished on time in 2011 for less than that amount.

Some media have speculated the final cost may exceed one billion Euros.

Opposition Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Heinz-Christian Strache said last summer he suspected costs had risen because money was being secretly siphoned off to political parties.

Austrian Times

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