Kerava obtained legal advice without bidding. The city's internal inspection is now investigating the matter.
In Kerava a new unclear purchase has come to the fore again: The city has spent nearly 400,000 euros on legal investigations of one case last year.
The money has been used to purchase services from an external law firm without a procurement decision and without tendering.
The Procurement Act gives municipalities the option to skip a tender in situations where litigation is already pending or likely.
According to the city's legal services, all purchases made by the city from Roschier Asianajotoimisto oy have not been related to legal proceedings, and a procurement decision should have been made on them.
The city of Kerava has now launched an internal audit on the matter. When it ends at the end of February at the earliest, the city will assess whether the procurement has been done correctly.
Town's from the response to HS's request for information, it appears that of the more than 393,000 euros invoiced by Roschier last year, the majority, i.e. approximately 385,000 euros, has been spent on labor legal advice regarding the urban engineering industry.
The amount billed by Roschier is large compared to, for example HS to report for schools' purchase of pole vaulters worth over 100,000 euros, of which Kerava's head of education and training Tiina Larsson decided without a tender.
The purchase of gymnastic poles and the service contract for the associated gymnastic videos is investigated by the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority.
As the previous one year, in 2022, based on the city's public purchase invoice data, Kerava paid more than 231,000 euros to five law firms.
At that time, Roschier's share was slightly more than 46,000 euros. The city used Roschier to investigate one construction site accident and an occupational safety crime.
The total amount of purchases for legal advice in 2021 is more than 115,000 euros, of which Roschier's share was almost 99,000 euros.
Invoices for legal advice for the years 2021–2022 have been searched from the city's purchase invoice data using the keywords “lawsuits” and “legal matters”. It is possible that Kerava has purchased legal advice from offices or business names whose official name does not contain these keywords.
HS asked the mayor Kirsi from Ronnu comment on Roschier's billing. HS would also like to ask Ronnu what case the legal advice targeted at the urban engineering industry, which required large sums of money, is related to.
Rontu forwarded the answer to the city's legal services. However, no employee of the city of Kerava could be found in the legal services who would like to give an interview on the subject.
Instead, HS received an email from an anonymous email address referring to legal services, in which presumably a Kerava official who works with legal matters commented on the case. HS has not been able to confirm the author of the message or the position in which he commented on the case.
According to the message, one explanation for the number of purchases of Kerava's legal services is that the city has had unfilled vacancies for lawyers.
Kerava now has two lawyers and one temporary legal trainee. The situation in the city's legal services is currently better than at the beginning of last year or in 2022.
According to the message, the use of external auditors in some situations is related to the fact that the matter requires special expertise that the city's own legal services do not have.
Thursday night after the story was published, the city of Kerava published a bulletin on procurement related to legal services. In the press release, Kerava wanted to emphasize the exceptional nature of the case.
“The individual case that was the subject of the news has been very exceptional and demanding. The case has been humanly and financially heavy, and we hope that similar situations will not occur in the future. The city cannot comment on the cases in more detail in public, because the issue is matters that are kept secret under the law,” Kerava's press release wrote.
The release also stated that Kerava is conducting an extended internal audit, which is estimated to be completed in February.
“Based on the results of this inspection, it is possible to assess whether appropriate procedures have been followed in the city's operations.”
Roschier's the nearly 400,000 euros invoiced last year is an exceptional amount compared to the invoicing of other offices in Kerava.
The neighboring municipalities of Tuusula and Järvenpää, which are slightly larger than Kerava, have also bought clearly less legal advice.
Tuusula's administrative director Antti-Pekka Röntynen according to Tuusula, the share of legal services in external purchases is approximately 110,000 euros per year.
In 2020 and 2021, Järvenpää has paid slightly more than 38,000 euros for external legal services to 5-6 law firms annually.
of HS from the response to the request for information, it appears that the term “preparation for trial, criminal case” has only been added to the labor legal advice regarding urban engineering in the billing of spring 2023. There is no information if the trial is taking place.
Kirsi Rontu has been marked as the approver of Roschier's invoices seen by HS, even though the customer was the branch manager of urban engineering. According to the anonymous message received by HS, the invoice approver is not necessarily the same person as the customer, because the invoice approver is determined by cost center.
“In sensitive matters, such as some of the ones in question, it is appropriate to also raise the invoice approval cycle to a higher aut
hority,” the message states.
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