Unable to pass resolutions

Audit office criticizes Tabakfabrik supervisory board

Dark clouds over the Linz tobacco factory: the Supervisory Board has not exactly excelled recently.

(Bild: Markus Wenzel)

The latest audit report from the Control Office on the Linz Center for the Creative Industries does not leave a good mark on the management and the highest auditing body. Not only has a detailed business plan only been available since this year, the auditors are particularly displeased that important decisions could not be made.

It was eleven years ago that an audit report on Tabakfabrik caused a stir.

Looking back: Back then, a managing director was in charge who apparently flouted all the rules. According to the auditors, he disregarded the supervisory board and even kept agreements and contracts after his resignation. It was only because the city contributed 850,000 euros that operations could be maintained at the time. When the tobacco factory was inspected again two years later, the city inspectorate finally reported a visibly positive change.

Far too few members present for resolutions
It was not until 2019 that the inspection office had cause for complaint again. At that time, it criticized the fact that individual members of the Supervisory Board only sporadically complied with the obligation to attend the four meetings per year. A criticism that has apparently remained ineffective to this day, as a recent 46-page audit report shows. At this year's October meeting of the Tabakfabrik Supervisory Board, for example, so few members were present that no resolutions could be passed. And yet the election of a new Supervisory Board Chairman after Klaus Luger would have been on the agenda. The resolutions had to be postponed and the company had to manage without a chairman for more than a quarter of a year.

A circumstance that annoys Georg Redlhammer (Neos), Chairman of the Supervisory Board: "Supervisory Board mandates are being filled by politicians who apparently have no idea what duties they have on the Supervisory Board, the controlling body of the companies. Because they don't know what they are doing!"

"This was missed under SPÖ responsibility"
His deputy on the control committee, FP municipal councillor Manuel Danner, takes a similar view: "This report shows once again that a professionalization and restructuring of the municipal companies is long overdue, something that was clearly overslept under the SPÖ's responsibility. The shortcomings and omissions literally run like a red thread through many companies in the City of Linz. It is necessary to push ahead with the process that has already been initiated as a matter of priority."