DA­REECE PO­LO AND ASHA JAVEED 

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s 2023 re­port rais­es con­cerns over min­istries’ non-com­pli­ance with leg­isla­tive re­quire­ments, rules and reg­u­la­tions, and oth­er di­rec­tives; weak­ness­es in the sys­tems of in­ter­nal con­trol; im­prop­er main­te­nance of ac­count­ing books and records; and breach of the rights of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. 

Fur­ther­more, on ex­am­i­na­tion of the ac­counts, a po­lice re­port was made on a mat­ter re­lat­ing to the Min­istry of Trade. 

The re­port, laid be­fore Par­lia­ment by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert on Fri­day, flagged many is­sues that pre­vent­ed the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of ex­pen­di­tures. 

This in­cludes chal­lenges with ac­count­ing of­fi­cers who failed to en­sure that the prop­er sys­tems of ac­count­ing were fol­lowed. 

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, $75 bil­lion was ear­marked to be spent ($52.3 bil­lion for ap­pro­pri­a­tion and $22.5 bil­lion in di­rect charges) for the ser­vices of T&T for the fi­nan­cial year Oc­to­ber 1, 2022, to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023.  

Of that fig­ure, $69,379,928,103.38 was shown as the to­tal ex­pen­di­ture in­curred by 42 heads of ex­pen­di­ture (state bod­ies). 

The re­port, which should have been laid 30 days af­ter the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance re­ceived it by April 30, as is ex­pect­ed each year, has been de­layed due to con­tro­ver­sy over a $2.6 bil­lion un­der­state­ment of rev­enue. 

Among Ram­dass’ many chal­lenges were ac­count­ing of­fi­cers. 

Doc­u­ments to sup­port pay­ments of pub­lic mon­ey to­talling $386,058,119.35 were not pro­duced by the Min­istry of Fi­nance for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion. 

“There were sev­en­teen pay­ments to­talling $27,173,786.13 where cheque num­bers were not seen record­ed on the pay­ment vouch­ers and eight in­stances where cheque num­bers were not en­tered on the sched­ules of ac­counts.  

“Au­dit not­ed that cheque num­bers were in­cor­rect­ly record­ed on the pay­ment vouch­ers and sched­ules of ac­counts for six­ty-five pay­ments to­talling $227,920,704.96. 

“Fif­teen pay­ments to­talling $604,661.10 were seen where its re­lat­ed com­mit­ments were not en­tered in the Vote Book,” the re­port said. 

An­oth­er ex­am­ple is that a lack of sup­port­ing doc­u­ments, such as let­ters of award, con­tract agree­ments, and de­liv­ery notes, were not pre­sent­ed to sub­stan­ti­ate pay­ments of $5,420,890.95 for med­ical equip­ment un­der the Min­istry of Health. 

In the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, a pay­ment of $25,000,000 was made to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) un­der the Com­mu­ni­ty Wa­ter Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme (CWIP) for the fi­nan­cial year. 

“The amount was paid for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of 15 projects for Phase 4 of the CWIP. Au­dit was un­able to ver­i­fy this pay­ment since sup­port­ing doc­u­ments were not pre­sent­ed for ex­am­i­na­tion,” the re­port said. 

In the Min­istry of En­er­gy, a con­tract agree­ment to sup­port pay­ments to­talling $702,000 to UDE­COTT was not pro­duced for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion.  

As a con­se­quence, the pay­ments could not be prop­er­ly vouched for. 

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al said that fi­nan­cial state­ments from re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions have not been re­ceived for au­dit.  

“From an analy­sis of the cu­mu­la­tive and cor­rob­o­ra­tive ef­fects of au­dit ev­i­dence on the ex­am­i­na­tion of rev­enue, it was con­clud­ed that the risk of ma­te­r­i­al mis­state­ment due to fraud or er­ror was as­sessed as high. Fur­ther, giv­en the scope lim­i­ta­tion im­posed by the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion, Au­dit was un­able to ob­tain suf­fi­cient ap­pro­pri­ate au­dit ev­i­dence to form an opin­ion on whether all rev­enue has been ful­ly ac­count­ed for and in­clud­ed in these fi­nan­cial state­ments,” the re­port said. 

Po­lice re­port made 

The re­port not­ed that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice made a po­lice re­port with re­gard to a project un­der the Min­istry of Trade, the de­vel­op­ment of the Eco-friend­ly Busi­ness Sec­tor (Scrap Iron). 

“By mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed 05/09/2023, the min­istry has ad­vised that an over­seas pay­ment of US$26,000.00 was made on 10/07/2023 to a com­pa­ny lo­cat­ed in In­done­sia for the pur­chase of four laser analy­sers for use by the Scrap Met­al In­spec­tors.  

“Nu­mer­ous at­tempts were made to con­tact this com­pa­ny for the ex­pect­ed date of de­liv­ery of items, but there were no re­spons­es. This com­pa­ny’s web­site can no longer be found on the in­ter­net. To date, the min­istry has been un­able to se­cure the items from the sup­pli­er or re­cov­er the pay­ment made. At the time of the au­dit, the items had still not been re­ceived. A re­port of this loss was sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice,” the re­port stat­ed.

Ju­di­cia­ry 

Ram­dass not­ed the fail­ure to pro­vide ap­provals for five in­voic­es to­talling $1.6 mil­lion for two projects at the Ju­di­cia­ry.  

This in­cludes the de­vel­op­ment of an in­for­ma­tion sys­tem, the de­liv­ery of the pure stor­age ex­pan­sion sup­ply, as well as the cre­ation of a mi­cro­da­ta cen­tre at the San Fer­nan­do Supreme Court. 

There were al­so dis­crep­an­cies with re­spect to vouch­er pay­ments amount­ing to $1.8 mil­lion for the de­vel­op­ment of cus­tomer care cen­tres in all courts and the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Hall of Jus­tice. 

“No ap­proval by the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer was seen for a 50 per cent down pay­ment in the amount of $1,591,432.25 and an in­ter­im pay­ment of $907,120.00 for the sup­ply and de­liv­ery of com­put­er hard­ware and ac­ces­sories re­quired for court­room up­grades,” the re­port stat­ed.

“This to­tal pay­ment of $2,498,552.25 was not in ac­cor­dance with the terms of the con­tract, which stip­u­lat­ed pay­ment of ‘100 per cent of the con­tract sum up­on com­ple­tion of the ser­vices’,” it added. 

Al­though $34 mil­lion was ear­marked to be spent by the Ju­di­cia­ry for mul­ti­ple de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, con­tract agree­ments were not pre­sent­ed for au­dit, mean­ing projects val­ued at $22.4 mil­lion could not be ver­i­fied. 

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the au­di­tor gen­er­al said she did not re­ceive rec­on­cil­i­a­tion state­ments from the Ju­di­cia­ry for 63 de­posit ac­counts with a to­tal bal­ance of $11.3 mil­lion.  

The ju­di­cia­ry al­so failed to pro­vide bank state­ments for an ac­count opened on April 13, 2023, for a $315,000 gift from the Unit­ed Na­tions En­ti­ty for Gen­der Equal­i­ty and Em­pow­er­ment for Women.  

“An ex­pla­na­tion was sought for the in­clu­sion of a named pri­vate busi­ness as part of the ac­count ti­tle/hold­er of an ac­count held at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, but none was re­ceived,” the Ju­di­cia­ry said.   

The TTPS 

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, vouch­ers to sup­port five pay­ments for the rental of ve­hi­cles to­talling $1,206,975 were not pro­vid­ed for au­dit scruti­ny by the TTPS.  

“There was one in­stance where a pay­ment for the rental of ve­hi­cles was made in ad­vance for the month of Oc­to­ber 2023 (fi­nan­cial year 2024) in the amount of $1,367,937.50. Sup­port­ing doc­u­ments for this pay­ment bore no ap­provals from the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer. For sev­en pay­ments to­talling $2,097,013.00 to ser­vice providers, the names of the per­sons who col­lect­ed the cheques were not seen in the let­ters of au­tho­ri­sa­tion,” the re­port said. 

With re­gard to po­lice build­ings, vouch­ers to sup­port “four pay­ments for re­pairs and main­te­nance to­talling $583,808.39 as record­ed in the Vote Book were not pro­duced for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion. As a re­sult, the ex­pen­di­ture could not be ver­i­fied.” 

It not­ed that the res­i­den­tial quar­ters, San Fer­nan­do, was re­fur­bished by the TTPS to be used as a shel­ter for vic­tims of gen­der-based vi­o­lence. 

“A con­tract was award­ed to a con­trac­tor for works to be done, how­ev­er, ad­di­tion­al work need­ed to be done to com­plete the re­fur­bish­ment. The cost of the ad­di­tion­al work was $212,247.24. The con­tract pro­vid­ed that any amend­ment or mod­i­fi­ca­tion may on­ly be made by writ­ten con­tract be­tween the par­ties. While the vari­a­tion of works was seen to be au­tho­rised by the then Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er, no amend­ment to the con­tract agree­ment was pro­vid­ed for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion,” it stat­ed.

“On a site vis­it to the project in Oc­to­ber 2023, it was found that works were in­com­plete. De­spite this, the full amount of $212,247.24 was paid to the con­trac­tor. A con­trac­tor was hired to un­der­take up­grade works to the wash­rooms on four floors of the San Fer­nan­do Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, in­clud­ing the ground floor, at a cost of $826,539.53. The fi­nal 80 per cent pay­ment of $661,231.62 was made in Sep­tem­ber 2023, how­ev­er, a com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cate was not pro­vid­ed for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion. A site vis­it in Oc­to­ber 2023 re­vealed that work on the ground floor wash­rooms had not been com­plet­ed in ac­cor­dance with the con­tract.”

It not­ed that a com­pa­ny was hired for the sup­ply of net­work ser­vices at a cost of $692,476.  

“A con­tract agree­ment and com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cate were not pro­vid­ed for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion,” it added.