The Russian and Israeli Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) signed a Collaboration Agreement, which became an updated revision of the Memorandum of Understanding regarding collaboration issues dated January 4, 2006.

The signing procedure took place on June, 2018 as a result of the meeting of the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation Alexey Kudrin with the Israeli SAI delegation headed by the State Controller and Ombudsman of Israel Joseph Haim Shapira.

During the meeting, both parties highly appreciated the level of development of interdepartmental relations between the control agencies of Russia and Israel, which successfully cooperate for many years not only on a bilateral basis, but also within the framework of international audit organizations.

At the same time, the leaders of the Supreme Audit Institutions of Russia and Israel were unanimous that new challenges appearing nowadays, including an active development of interstate relations between the two countries, require the Supreme Audit Institutions to apply new formats of interdepartmental cooperation. "I am sure that the updated cooperation agreement signed today not only will determine the vector of development of our bilateral relations for the years coming, but will also bring it to a new, even higher level," the head of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation said after signing the document.

Along with signing the agreement, Aleksey Kudrin and Joseph Haim Shapira approved the Cooperation Program for 2018-2019, which implementation starts immediately after the meeting. On June 4, a Russian-Israeli seminar on the exchange of experience in the audit of socio-economic development forecasts will be held at the Accounts Chamber.

A special attention at the meeting was paid to the issues related to the preparations for the XXIII INTOSAI Congress, which will be held in 2019 in Moscow. Alexey Kudrin invited his colleague to join the work on preparing the topics for the forthcoming Congress. "The preparation for the largest forum of the international audit community is one of the most urgent issues for us these days. And I hope that the supreme audit body of Israel, as a member of INTOSAI, will share its rich experience and developed solutions in the areas related to the topics of the forthcoming Congress, "Alexey Kudrin stated.

The Russian and Israeli controllers are going to discuss more details of the preparation for the Congress within the framework of the forthcoming seminar.