Eesti in brief - 2010-03-17

Estonian State Audit Office revealed that East Tallinn Central Hospital has made a purchase of services valued at 450 million kroons (28.8 million euros) without organizing a public tender, reports BBN. According to the audit authority, the City of Tallinn recommended municipal enterprises to register themselves as contracting authorities, but East Tallinn Central Hospital acted in a different way. “They decided that tendering was expensive and time-consuming,” said the audit office in its latest report on local government enterprises. Hospital management said that the objective is to provide health-care services and earn income as a commercial undertaking. Therefore, the hospital must operate as a business. “In the medical market it is quite important to operate, fully complying with the public procurement act,” said member of the hospital’s supervisory board Peeter Mardna. Mardna pointed out that the hospital had commissioned a legal expert study which showed that it had not violated the law.

During the first two months of 2010, the Tallinn City Treasury collected a total of 899 million kroons (57.6 million euros) in revenue, while payments were 138 million kroons higher, reports LETA. “Due to the cyclically special nature in the revenue and payments during the first couple of months of the year, payments exceeded revenue during the first two months of this year,” commented Tallinn’s press service Raepress. The lower revenue in the beginning of the year is due to the special nature of tax payment schedules, to deadlines for making decisions on payment of dividends, to the process of selling assets, the seasonal nature of authorities’ own revenue, etc. The payments in the beginning of the year were affected by the payments covering the costs transferred from the previous budgetary year. Extra costs were also caused by this year’s cold winter and abundance of snow – these factors brought along higher costs on heating, road maintenance and removal of snow.

Petrol and mobile phone batteries were discovered in a bag in the luggage compartment of a Finnair aircraft nearly four months ago, reported Ilta-sanomat. The bag was owned by an Estonian. The travel bag was filled with hazardous substances. The contents of the bag were discovered in the Helsinki Vantaa airport when the Estonian’s bag was x-rayed. The man was traveling from Hong Kong to Finland and was heading onwards to Tallinn. According to information available, the petrol in the bag leaked in the aircraft’s luggage compartment. The petrol and the batteries could have caused an explosion and a fire. There were 224 persons on board the flight in question. “One single spark would have been enough,” commented a security officer at Vantaa Airport. Finnair kept the incident quiet for nearly four months. The case became public on March 11 when the Vantaa court read a statement of charges against two Estonians involved in the case.