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The Dept of Civil Law |
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In connection with the government's administrative reforms and initiatives to reduce bureaucracy, the Foundation Registry was in 1989 replaced by the Department of Civil Law, which is an independent unit under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Justice. In 1992 the Department of Civil Law selected the accounts of the Foundation for a random check. The Department asked for the accounts of the Foundation, and reviewed these without expressing any criticism towards the Foundation. During the following years the Department of Civil Law has continuously carried out different investigations of the Foundation. The Department of Civil Law has investigated the state of the accounts, the securing of the founding capital, and matters surrounding the projects. On June 1, 2001, there were more than 2,400 pages of files in the Department of Civil Law's file on the Foundation. As there is open administration in the Department of Civil Law all these documents are publicly known. In the files one can see approaches from for example a great number of journalists, who request what they call: "all available material". With the reform to reduce bureaucracy the Department of Civil Law received the task - as the highest legal supervision of foundations - to go into cases, where they, for example based on an auditor's report, could be in doubt of whether a foundation's activities were within the requirements of the Foundation Legislation. The Foundation therefore did not wish, as a matter of course, to deliver documents to the Department of Civil Law. Since there was no case, the Department of Civil Law had no legal right, according to the opinion of the board, to demand any material handed over from the Foundation. The Foundation, however, lost the court case, and has since then delivered all the documents the Department of Civil Law has asked for, apart from names and CPR-numbers [Central Personal Registry - ID number] of the contributors, which the board has maintained was totally private information. The Department of Civil Law has never expressed itself towards the board about the results of this control. At no stage have the investigations given occasion to criticism of the Foundation, apart from complaints that the board has been too slow to answer the requests from the Department of Civil Law. Among the documents of the Department of Civil Law are found requests and answers from the Danish consulates of the countries where projects have received grants from the Foundation (Brazil, Malaysia and Tahiti), information from tax authorities, as well as information which IBIS has found about companies in Malaysia, England, France and Brazil (IBIS is an international organization, which against payments can procure company accounts all over the world). The Department of Civil Law has also received material from journalists at the Jyllandsposten [a Danish newspaper]. The Department of Civil Law has been asked to make pronouncements in connection with questions in the Danish Parliament. These have led to at least two conclusions:
The many files in the Department of Civil Law testify to an extensive control activity. It is therefore worth noting that the Department of Civil Law had not, up to June 26, 2001, found anything to object to. |
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