The audit of Leioa's 2023 accounts has received qualificati…

The Basque Court of Public Accounts (TVCP/HKEE) has definitively approved the audit report of the 2023 general accounts of the Leioa City Council, issuing an opinion on legality with reservations. The Council contracted four services totaling 688,306 euros without a legal procedure, and spent another 1.8 million euros on six expired contracts without contractual coverage. The agreement was approved in the meeting of May 21, 2026, and was published in issue number 211 of the Boletín Oficial del País Vasco on November 4, 2026, under reference 2026/4649.

The report was carried out within the framework of the duties established by Law 1/1988, of February 5, of the Basque Court of Public Accounts, and analyzes both the legal and accounting aspects of the council’s 2023 general accounts: budget, debt, financial operations, personnel, contracting of works and services, subsidies, and public law revenues. Leioa had 32,491 inhabitants on January 1, 2023, and in addition to the council, the autonomous organizations Soinu Atadia and Euskararen Erakundea are included in its accounts, as well as its participation in the Consorcio de Aguas Bilbao Bizkaia, Consorcio de Transportes de Bizkaia, and Consorcio Haurreskolak consortia.

The Court sent the provisional results to the council on March 11, 2026, for the submission of allegations, taking as a starting point the accounts approved by the city council on July 24, 2024. The signatories of the agreement are president Ana Helguera Líbano and general secretary Julio Artetxe Barkin. However, the opinion regarding the financial accounts is favorable: overall, the accounts provide a faithful image of the assets and financial position.

Opinion on legality with reservations

The essence of the report is based on two shortcomings, which are precisely the reason for the reservations:

The Council contracted expenses corresponding to four services without using any legal procedure, totaling 688,306 euros. Given their individual amounts, they should have been processed, at a minimum, through a simplified open procedure.
The Council continued to execute six expired contracts throughout 2023, and did not fulfill the three-month advance tender required by article 29.4 of Law 9/2017, on Public Sector Contracts. The expenditure executed without contractual coverage amounted to 1.8 million euros.

Shortcomings detected in contracting

After analyzing eight contracts, the Court listed other errors, including the formulas of the tender specifications and the calculation of guarantees:

In the contracts awarded for the cleaning service (7.2 million euros) and sports services (1.7 million), the commitments regarding the composition of the table or the treatment of personal data were not appropriate.
The specifications of seven contracts (files 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8) allowed offers that matched the bidding type to receive a positive score, in awards totaling 49 million euros.
The modification of the cleaning contract for residential buildings was not formally implemented nor published in the OJEU.
Two works and the supply of five self-cleaning toilets (280,992 euros) suffered significant delays, doubling or more than doubling the planning, yet there is no approval for deadline extensions nor the imposition of penalties.

Likewise, 13 services processed through small purchases (404,372 euros), one service (63,524 euros), and two other expired contracts (77,407 euros) should have been processed via the simplified short open procedure.

Deviations observed in the budget and accounting

The report also includes significant accounting problems: at the close of 2023, 735,807 euros in expenses were not registered in the budget, financing deviations were below 3.8 million euros compared to what was shown in the liquidations, and councilors’ allowances —86,085 euros— were incorrectly classified. In the personnel section, the regulatory framework dates from 2008 and was not published in the BOB, and six monitor positions that meet permanent needs do not appear in relation to the staff.

Payment terms and other failures

The City Council paid 6.7 million euros outside the legal deadline, 27% of the total paid; in autonomous organizations, meanwhile, 265,452 euros, more than half of the total.
In the urban planning and tax section, the ICIO ordinances include a 50% discount for works up to 6,010 euros, which has no place in the provincial regulations.
The City Council’s PGOU is not adapted to the current regulations within the period established by law.

The City Council has responded that it is on the path to correction

In the allegations, the city council stated that it has been tendering and awarding expired contracts between 2023 and 2024, including home-to-home assistance, the removal of trailers, and the maintenance of computer systems. Furthermore, it states that the calculation of financing deviations has been corrected, the classification of allowances will be fixed in 2026, and the review of the PGOU is underway. The court, however, has maintained its conclusions.

Thus, the residents of Leioa now have a direct update on the transparency of the municipal management and the legality of public contracts, and the report provides essential references to both the city council and the citizens; that is, to what extent public spending remains uncontrolled when public contracts are not processed according to the law.

Fuente: Boletín Oficial del País Vasco, n.º 211, 4 de noviembre de 2026, I. Otras Disposiciones, orr. 1-12 (official reference: 2026/4649).