Oulu cannot show how 20 million euros was spent

Oulu is spending about 20 million euros of municipal money on its 2026 European Capital of Culture year, but the city cannot provide a detailed account of how the funds have been used, Yle reports.

Yle sought information on the project’s spending, including the costs of employee travel, credit card purchases and visibility bought from social media influencers. The city did not provide the requested information and referred Yle to the Oulu Cultural Foundation, a city-founded foundation that has independently prepared and carried out the cultural capital year.

The foundation also did not provide detailed answers. It gave Yle general information by email about its finances and principles, and later reported the total amount spent so far and the percentage distribution of expenses among personnel costs, communications and marketing, the cultural programme’s own production costs and grants awarded to the programme.

The foundation’s financial statements and public annual reports did not provide a detailed breakdown of the spending. In last year’s income statement for ordinary activities, personnel costs amounted to about 2.6 million euros. Other costs were grouped together at just under 7.7 million euros, including about 3.1 million euros in grants for productions not carried out by the foundation itself. Communications and marketing cost nearly 2.6 million euros.

The Oulu2026 project has a total budget of about 50 million euros. The city is providing about 20 million euros between 2021 and 2027 through annual operating grants.

The state is providing 20 million euros between 2020 and 2026 through project grants. About 10 million euros is coming from company partnerships and other projects, as well as private foundations and event ticket sales.

After returning to the city with further questions, Yle received a report on the city’s subsidiaries, documents on the foundation’s general activities and finances, and audit reports covering 2022 to 2025. The financial statements had not prompted any remarks from the auditors.

The city said it had no other reports on the use of the funds, such as receipts relating to the foundation’s activities.

Yle asked public law professor Tomi Voutilainen of the University of Eastern Finland to assess the situation. He said the case represented a clear transparency problem because the money came from Oulu taxpayers and should be fully transparent to the public.

“Now a fog descends because the activities have been organised in a way that transparency does not fully extend to. It is in the hands of the City of Oulu to determine how extensively information is available,” Voutilainen said.

According to Voutilainen, it is common for cities to run some of their activities through foundations or in-house companies that are not required to disclose precisely how money is spent. He said a significant amount of public money is channelled through such organisations, which are not currently covered by Finland’s Act on the Openness of Government Activities.

Oulu Mayor Ari Alatossava believes the situation does not present a genuine problem.