The Riders’ Association lost hundreds of thousands of euros

Finland the equestrian union is bubbling. Due to a mistake, the association lost hundreds of thousands of euros in government grants.

It was reported last week Equestrian sport and MT Horses.

Equestrian according to the news, at the end of SRL’s last year’s financial statements, an adjustment had been made to the surplus or deficit of the previous financial period or even several previous financial periods for 330,000 euros.

This means that incorrect financial statements have been issued in 2023 and 2024. The actual situation in those years has been a total of 330,000 euros worse.

At the end of the week it was suspected that the mess was caused by the fact that the union did not submit a subsidy application to the state in time for the amount that had been budgeted for it.

“Of course, the situation is really unfortunate, and there has been a significant but human error in the reporting, which unfortunately has not been reported to the board. Because of this, after the situation was resolved, the board had to state that it has lost its trust in the executive director and it has been mutually agreed that he will resign”, SRL’s board chairman Marjukka Manninen said in the press release of the association’s spring meeting last Sunday.

“The error was not intentional, and no one has benefited financially from it. The error in question has no impact on the results for 2025, but the entry has been made in the balance sheet, where the issue was initially resolved.”

At the spring meeting no statutory matters were discussed. 17.4. the published auditor’s statement and the reporting error that emerged in it, as well as the missed subsidies from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, only became apparent when the registration period for the spring meeting had ended.

According to the press release, Chairman Manninen explained in more detail the course of the audit process and why the final documents were only available last week.

MT Horses during the meeting, he explained to the meeting audience why the materials delivered to the auditor from the union were late.

He said that he personally contacted the executive director several times Jukka Koivisto and that he asked if there were any problems with the materials. According to Koivisto, there were no problems.

However, during the audit, an error in the receipt of grants came to light. According to Manninen, the executive director explained this and said that he had not noticed the new schedule and the changed process. The CEO was confident that the matter would be fixed.

“It can be said that a big mistake has been made, that we have not gone to investigate these issues even more closely, but have trusted the executive director’s report,” Manninen said.

To the press release According to the SRL board, it is important that the administrative processes and finances, especially with regard to grants, are checked in the future so that similar mistakes do not happen again.

“We, the members of the board, are naturally sorry and apologize that this happened,” says Manninen.

As the statutory meeting matters were not decided in the end, the financial statement and discharge of liability as well as other items on the agenda will be discussed at the follow-up meeting of SRL.