Between the sword of Damocles and public management: case of the personal and pecuniary liability of public accountants in Morocco

Abstract

In order to answer the question of control of public wealth, the myth of Damocles, linked to the legal and historical mechanism of the personal and pecuniary responsibility of the public accountant, has the real purpose of removing from public opinion any suspicion of embezzlement. In doing so, it creates an imaginary world, the result of interactions between myth, public financial law and public management. These are analyzed from a legal and historical point of view.

For the execution of an expense or the recovery of a debt after it has been taken over, there must be two essential participants, namely the authorizing officer and the public accountant. The public authorizing officer for revenue and expenditure, any person who has the authority on behalf of a public body to initiate, establish, liquidate or order the recovery of a debt or the payment of a debt.

The accountant is any official or agent who is authorized to carry out revenue, expenditure or securities handling operations on behalf of a public body, either by means of the funds and securities in his custody, or by internal transfers of entries, or through the intermediary of other public accountants or external cash accounts whose movements he orders or supervises.

Authorizing officers are subject to three types of control: a priori control, a posteriori control and judicial control. The public accountant carries out a regularity control for which he assumes personal and pecuniary responsibility and which falls under the first type of control (a priori) and which is carried out jointly with the supervisory body, each in his own field of intervention.

This control tries to prevent irregularities. Its purpose is to prevent irregularities from being committed; an irregularity that is not detected by the public accountant automatically triggers his or her personal and financial liability, hence the need to carry out an exhaustive control, which is not possible given the number and quantity of operations for which the accountant is responsible.

JEL Classification: H19 

Paper type: Theoretical Research