Board mem­bers of the T&T Free Zones Com­pa­ny Ltd came un­der fire on Wednesday when they ap­peared be­fore a Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee as they re­vealed they did not have an in­ter­nal au­di­tor and they were fill­ing the gap.

Com­mit­tee chair­man Wade Mark said it was “amaz­ing” that the com­pa­ny was op­er­at­ing with­out an au­di­tor and de­mand­ed that the mat­ter be rec­ti­fied.

The board mem­bers came un­der scruti­ny by the Pub­lic Ac­counts En­ter­pris­es Com­mit­tee (PAEC) as its ac­counts for 2012 to 2017 were ex­am­ined.

Com­pa­ny chair­man Karen Tom Yew-Jar­dine said the com­pa­ny was prof­itable and had cre­at­ed 1,000 jobs from free zones com­pa­nies.

The com­pa­ny was es­tab­lished in 1988 and de­signed to en­cour­age lo­cal and for­eign in­vest­ment in ex­port-dri­ven projects that cre­ate jobs, de­vel­op skills and cre­ate ex­ter­nal mar­kets for prod­ucts.

Mark crit­i­cised the pro­ce­dure where board mem­bers were act­ing as an in­ter­nal au­dit team in the ab­sence of an in­ter­nal au­di­tor.

“It’s very un­usu­al for a com­pa­ny to re­ly on a board for that (in­ter­nal au­di­tor). You need an in­de­pen­dent au­di­tor since board mem­bers are ap­point­ed peo­ple,” Mark said.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Trade Frances Sieg­noret said it was a per­ti­nent point “very well tak­en” and it pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for change in the up­com­ing new struc­ture of the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones for­mat which the com­pa­ny was chang­ing too. She said the is­sue would be raised with the ex­ec­u­tive.

The act­ing In­vest­ments Di­vi­sion di­rec­tor of the Fi­nance Min­istry Chin­ta­mani Sookoo al­so said the Min­istry’s State En­ter­pris­es Per­for­mance Man­u­al pre­scribes in­ter­nal au­di­tors and she “strong­ly” rec­om­mend­ed that the com­pa­ny get one.

Tom Yew-Jar­dine said the com­pa­ny nev­er had an in­ter­nal au­di­tor since its in­cep­tion over 30 years ago.

Com­pa­ny di­rec­tor Es­ther Le Gen­dre, who ini­tial­ly de­fend­ed the sit­u­a­tion, said board mem­bers’ in­ter­nal au­dit­ing was more about process­es to en­sure sys­tem func­tion­ing, rather than au­dit­ing fi­nan­cial state­ments.

“But we hear you,” Le Gen­dre said.

Mark in­sist­ed, “It must be done. You can’t con­tin­ue with this (lack of) over­sight of all these years. Is ei­ther you alive or you dead, you can’t say you on­ly have a few peo­ple and have no in­ter­nal au­di­tor. Ei­ther do it prop­er­ly or not.”

Mark al­so ex­pressed con­cern that the com­pa­ny does not analyse fi­nan­cial state­ments from com­pa­nies un­der its purview and re­lies on the “in­tegri­ty” of such re­ports.

“Ex­plain that. You have a du­ty to ex­am­ine these re­ports,” Mark said, ac­cus­ing the di­rec­tors of tak­ing re­ports for grant­ed.

Le Gen­dre said on­ly au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments are ac­cept­ed from a cer­ti­fied au­di­tor. “That’s why we re­ly on state­ments’ in­tegri­ty...usu­al­ly there are no flaws in the state­ments.”

PAEC mem­bers Fos­ter Cum­mings and Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, how­ev­er, did not see it was ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary for the ac­counts to be analysed, though Bap­tiste-Primus felt any man­age­ment let­ter with rec­om­men­da­tions from au­di­tors should be heed­ed. Le Gen­dre even­tu­al­ly agreed “there’s room” for fur­ther analy­sis of state­ments to ob­serve com­pa­nies’ trends.

Seignoret al­so agreed when Mark said the com­pa­ny should en­sure free zone com­pa­nies sub­mit their fi­nan­cial state­ments and mon­i­tor them since such com­pa­nies en­joy tremen­dous ben­e­fits. He not­ed that one such com­pa­ny, T&T Fine Co­coa Com­pa­ny, had not sub­mit­ted ac­counts since 2014.

“Chair­man, you hit the nail on the head re­gard­ing the tremen­dous ben­e­fits, so we’ll be urg­ing swift ac­tion,” Seignoret added.

Seignoret said the pol­i­cy for the trans­for­ma­tion of the Free Zone Com­pa­ny in­to the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones is pro­ject­ed to be ready by Sep­tem­ber. On whether the ex­ist­ing com­pa­ny may be closed down and a new com­pa­ny might re­place it, Tom Yew- Jar­dine said there was no in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that.

PAEC mem­ber Cher­rie-Ann Crichlow-Cock­burn re­peat­ed­ly voiced con­cern about the com­pa­ny hav­ing a spe­cial fo­cus and en­cour­ag­ing com­pa­nies to To­ba­go. Tom Yew-Jar­dine’s an­swers did not seem to con­vince her but Le Gen­dre as­sured the new pol­i­cy will like­ly change and To­ba­go was not ex­clud­ed from any­thing. Le Gen­dre said the com­pa­ny hopes to have a new fee struc­ture, ahead.