Rose­marie Sant

There is si­lence from Pres­i­dent's House on new al­le­ga­tions which have sur­faced on so­cial me­dia about ques­tion­able spend­ing at Pres­i­dent's House and that a rel­a­tive of Reema Car­mona, wife of Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona, is em­ployed at Pres­i­dent's House.

So­cial me­dia has been abuzz fol­low­ing blogs by po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Rho­da Bharath that mil­lions of dol­lars have al­leged­ly been spent on wine and jew­el­ry.

The Guardian at­tempt­ed to speak with head of the house­hold Es­ther Liv­er­pool. When a call was first made through the PBX to the Pres­i­dent's House some­one said there were prob­lems with the phone sys­tem and the call could not be trans­ferred.

An­oth­er at­tempt was made and when the call was trans­ferred and a re­quest was made to speak with Liv­er­pool some­one said she had stepped out. A Miss Hack­ett ad­vised, how­ev­er, that all ques­tions be re­ferred to the Pres­i­dent's com­mu­ni­ca­tions ad­vi­sor Theron Boodan.

At­tempts to con­tact Boodan were al­so un­suc­cess­ful. Calls to his phone were al­so unan­swered and voice mes­sages were not re­turned. He had is­sued a brief com­ment the day be­fore de­scrib­ing the al­le­ga­tions as "base­less."

At­tempts were al­so made to con­tact one Sav­it­ri Singh named in Bharath's blog as a rel­a­tive of Reema Car­mona but the T&T Guardian was told that she had left for the day.

Bharath first post­ed the blog on Sun­day in which she spoke of wine be­ing bought in Italy and re­la­belled with the of­fi­cial seal of the Pres­i­dent's House and la­belled Pres­i­den­tial House sparkling wine. There are im­ages of the wine bot­tle on Face­book.

In her blog, Bharath point­ed to a $2 mil­lion dis­crep­an­cy in spend­ing at Pres­i­dent's House con­tained in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port.

The re­port, which is avail­able on­line un­der the head­ing In­di­vid­ual Ar­eas of Con­cern, speaks to ex­pen­di­ture con­trol at Pres­i­dent's House.

It said, "There were 85 in­stances of in­cor­rect clas­si­fi­ca­tion of ex­pen­di­ture to­talling $2,685,236.90 in con­tra­ven­tion of fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion 65 which stip­u­lates that a vote may not be ap­plied to a pur­pose for which it was not in­tend­ed."

A mem­o­ran­dum was sub­se­quent­ly sent to the Head of Ex­pen­di­ture at Pres­i­dent's House on March 15, 2016, with a re­quest for a re­sponse to the mat­ters raised to be sub­mit­ted with­in three weeks of the date of is­sue of the mem­o­ran­dum. But up to April 15 of this year when the re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment, there was no in­di­ca­tion that a re­sponse had been forth­com­ing.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port said that "mean­ing­ful re­sponse to au­dit is­sues raised is a cru­cial step to­wards re­solv­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and in­ter­nal con­trol weak­ness­es. It al­so re­flects man­age­ment's com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and achiev­ing good gov­er­nance."

The re­port fur­ther stat­ed that "ac­count­ing of­fi­cers are re­quired by fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion 8 (l) to "re­ply prompt­ly and ful­ly to any queries..." of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

Mem­o­ran­da out­lin­ing find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions have been is­sued to the min­istries and de­part­ments au­dit­ed.

There was no re­sponse from Pres­i­dent's House on whether the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed had since been sub­mit­ted.

Mean­time, the T&T Guardian was able to con­firm that one of the peo­ple named in the on­line blog, Pre­ma­tee Nagee, is no longer em­ployed at Pres­i­dent's House. A well-placed source at Pres­i­dent's House said Nagee was once Reema Car­mona's styl­ist.

Pres­i­dent Car­mona is in Guyana where he de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress to the in­ter­na­tion­al ju­di­cial con­fer­ence, the Com­mon­wealth Mag­is­trates' and Judges' As­so­ci­a­tion, a Lon­don-based or­gan­i­sa­tion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Supreme Court of Guyana.

Last night, CNC3 News spoke to Car­mona in Guyana but he said he was busy at­tend­ing a con­fer­ence and would be will­ing to speak when he re­turns to the coun­try to­mor­row.