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Friday, February 21, 2025

PM ‘surprised, disappointed’ by Auditor General fiasco

by

Jensen La Vende
277 days ago
20240520

 

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has de­scribed the im­passe at he of­fices of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and Fi­nance Min­istry as “un­nec­es­sary, dan­ger­ous bac­cha­nal.” 

Speak­ing with the me­dia at the Con­fer­ence Room at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, Row­ley, when asked about the le­gal tus­sle be­tween the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and Fi­nance Min­is­ter, said he was dis­ap­point­ed. 

The two of­fice­hold­ers, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass have been at odds for weeks. The most re­cent episode in the saga is the court de­cid­ing to give an un­der­tak­ing to rule on June 3, if a probe or­dered by Im­bert in­to the gen­e­sis of the im­passe will be al­lowed to pro­ceed.

The two of­fice­hold­ers threat­ened to sue each oth­er af­ter the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al al­leged she was be­ing forced to add in­for­ma­tion to her au­dit re­port that was sent out­side of the stip­u­lat­ed time frame.  

Par­lia­ment was forced to have spe­cial sit­tings ex­tend­ing the time for the Trea­sury to sub­mit fi­nan­cial state­ments to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al un­der Sec­tion 24:1 of the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act and to ex­tend the pe­ri­od of time for the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to pre­pare and sub­mit re­ports on the same, pur­suant to Sec­tion 25:1 of the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act. 

Min­is­ter Im­bert, at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence last Thurs­day said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion aims to un­earth what caused an er­ror that re­sult­ed in an un­der­state­ment of rev­enue of $2,599,278,188.72, trig­ger­ing the im­passe be­tween the two of­fices. The er­ror was from switch­ing from a man­u­al cheque-clear­ing sys­tem to an elec­tron­ic cheque-clear­ing soft­ware. The switch came in Feb­ru­ary last year with at­tempts in­ter­nal­ly be­tween the Cen­tral Bank and the Board of In­land Rev­enue to rec­ti­fy it. 

When asked about it yes­ter­day, Row­ley said, “I am quite sur­prised at this de­vel­op­ment and very dis­ap­point­ed that it would have hap­pened. There is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place and I, like every­one else, would want to see what the in­ves­ti­ga­tion says be­cause this is not the kind of thing that I an­tic­i­pat­ed.” 

He added that he was first told of the is­sue in ear­ly March. With decades of par­lia­men­tary ex­pe­ri­ence, he said au­di­tor re­ports are not some­thing that nor­mal­ly “turns the coun­try up­side down.” 

“As Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try I don’t take like­ly a pub­lic of­fi­cial, es­pe­cial­ly one in au­dit, that says to the rest of the world that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter is en­gaged in back­dat­ing the books. That is a very, very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion with far-reach­ing con­se­quences,” he said. 

He re­called a few years ago an in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing com­pa­ny threat­ened to down­grade the coun­try af­ter an er­ror was de­tect­ed and lat­er cor­rect­ed. He said the body found that the cor­rect­ed er­ror sug­gest­ed there was some­thing un­to­ward.  

“You could imag­ine when the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al is say­ing to the world that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has back­dat­ed the fi­nances and all kinds of in­ter­pre­ta­tions be­ing put on that al­leged ac­tion?”  

He said he was forced to look on “help­less­ly” af­ter learn­ing of the dis­agree­ment in March which be­came pub­lic in April. He said through­out the or­deal he had no in­put in any of it.  

Row­ley said a prob­lem re­quired a sane and sober re­sponse but in­stead, it de­scend­ed in­to “un­nec­es­sary, dan­ger­ous bac­cha­nal.” 


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