Finance Inspectorate Sends RTP's 12.25 Million Euros in Staff Allowances to the Court of Auditors, Finding No Legal Basis for Them

The Inspeção-Geral de Finanças (IGF, the Finance Inspectorate) has finished its audit of RTP, the public broadcaster, and is sending it to the Tribunal de Contas (Court of Auditors) to establish whether RTP's managers bear financial liability. The final report holds that about 12.25 million euros in allowances paid to staff from 2018 to 2024 had no legal basis, according to Observador, which reported on Thursday, 5 November, that it had seen the report. The report has not been published.

In the IGF's words, as quoted by Observador, the allowances were "not provided for in the company agreement and without legal support, nor evidence of the shareholder's prior authorisation", and "may constitute financial offences, to be determined by the Court of Auditors". The shareholder is the State. It is for the court, not the IGF, to decide whether anyone is liable.

What the 12.25 million euros covers

• A "presentation" allowance: 5.42 million euros from 2018 to 2024. It is not in the company agreement (the Acordo de Empresa) and was created in 2013.
• Seven other allowances: 4.04 million euros, paid "without any legal basis" and set "through individual negotiations with the workers".
• Allowances kept after the job ended: 2.79 million euros, where structure and coordination allowances were folded into staff members' permanent pay after they stopped doing those roles.

The IGF's reasoning is that a board decision or internal rule cannot create pay of this kind on its own: under the successive budget-execution decree-laws, it needed the prior authorisation of the shareholder. Without it, the IGF says, RTP breached the principles of budget discipline, transparency and uniformity in public-sector staff management.

The managers' reply

The board members in office over the period reject the finding. In their formal reply to the IGF, quoted by Observador, they call it "not only manifestly incorrect, but also incomprehensible". They argue that:

• the allowances predate their mandates;
• they rest on the company agreement or on internal rules, and so are acquired rights of the workers;
• earlier IGF audits never raised the matter, and an IGF audit covering 2013 and 2014 found that the allowances did not breach the budget rules then in force;
• the payments appeared in the staff costs of business plans the Government approved.

The audited period covers eight board members, among them Gonçalo Reis, Nuno Artur Silva and Nicolau Santos, according to Jornal de Negócios.

What RTP did after the draft

When the draft report surfaced in August, RTP's board said in a written clarification (Portuguese only) that the allowances were created before the audited boards took office, applied to hundreds of workers and made up less than 2 percent of staff costs. It suspended new awards of the allowances as a precaution, while disputing the findings, as we reported at the time.

On 18 August, RTP and the unions signed an addendum to the company agreement, "clarifying" that the allowances flagged by the IGF had always been provided for and are owed. The board said that this gave it the conditions to keep paying them, Jornal de Negócios reported. The final report keeps the IGF's position.

Other findings

According to Observador, the final report also:

• calls RTP's pay structure highly complex, which weakens transparency and control over staff costs;
• notes there is no performance appraisal system for workers, and that RTP has relied on contractors for permanent needs, with many cases ending in court orders to take the workers onto the staff;
• finds that a 2025 voluntary departure plan cost 7.8 million euros and involved 135 workers, but had limited effect because 105 people were hired over the same period;
• warns of RTP's heavy dependence on the contribuição para o audiovisual (audiovisual contribution), the fee charged on household electricity bills, which has not changed since 2016, and says RTP lacks information from energy suppliers on how much of it they collect;
• finds a short-term loan taken without the required prior authorisation, and no formal procedures for valuing property or recording impairments.

The Finance Minister ordered the audit after a request from parliament's budget committee to review RTP's financial and staff management. Four parties later voted to call three RTP chairmen and the IGF before parliament over the allowances.