Philipsburg:--- The Department of ROB and VROM was found to be changing the figures and calculation methods for certain projects. This was discovered during the three months investigation carried out by the SOAB. In their preliminary report they found that the legal charges for building permits is based on the figure submitted by the applicant and the calculated business value from VROM.
The inspectors found in their investigation that the legal charges are based on the lowest amount mentioned. There were cases where the legal charges were based on the highest amount but eventually was changed to the lowest business value.
After checking and making their own calculations the inspectors of SOAB believes the civil servants working in the two departments were changing the figures intentionally. The calculations is supposed to be done from a set formula however, there are evidence to show that the figures were intentionally changed so that the legal charges would be higher than it was supposed to be.
According to the SOAB report when they questioned the director of ROB he stated that the requests for permits for one building are done in stages so that the applicant would pay less legal charges. Based on test calculations conducted by the investigators they discovered that by splitting up the larger projects into small projects yielded much higher legal fees.
The SOAB believes that this is only logical since the calculation method is digressive.
Upon further investigations the SOAB discovered another reason for splitting up of the bigger projects is that the smaller project on the same building would always be under the Naf. 500.000 which means the Director of ROB would be the one signing off on the permits instead of the executive council.
