Consular staff abused finances

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Auditor General Terrence Bastian.

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

THE Auditor General has highlighted abuse of educational allowance in the amount of $167,000 at the Consulate General of the Bahamas’ Miami office.

In a report tabled in the House of Assembly, Auditor General Terrence Bastian noted that an officer stationed at the office received allowance for a child’s educational expenses, but that child did not go to a school that required tuition fees.

Further, cheques for tuition were not made out to the education institutions, but rather printed in the officers’ names.

Seconded employees with children are given an educational allowance of $22,000 per child annually.

“There were two officers in the Miami consulate that received this allowance, Officer A has three children and Officer B has one child,” the report for the period July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018 noted.

“Upon requesting documentary evidence on the payment of these allowances, neither the Miami Consulate, nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could produce evidence to support enrollment and attendance of these officers’ children.

“Further we observed that one of Officer A’s children did not attend private high school but a public high school for which tuition is not required.

“It was also observed that allowance cheques in the amount of $167,445 were written in the officers’ names rather than the educational institution. This did not appear to be in accordance with government procedures.”

Officer A received a total of $137,800, while Officer B was given $29,645 for educational allowance.

The auditor general recommended that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provide documentation to support the expenditure.

In addition, officials at the Miami office were found to be using debit cards improperly.

There were a number of purchases made by debit cardholders that had no supporting documentation, the report said.

“There were no quotes, requisitions, purchase orders and invoices evidenced for these transactions, which is not in accordance with Public Treasury procedures.

“We also noted that the debit cards did not have assigned limits and four cardholders spent $156,290 during the two fiscal periods under audit.”

A further breakdown into the spending found that one officer spent $91,857.10 over the two fiscal periods. Another officer spent $32,157.81.

Officer three spent $26,408.43, while officer four spent $5,867.30.

The government’s chief auditor also found that there had been haphazard deposits and cash kept by a supervisor.

During the examination of the office’s accounting records, Mr Bastian said cash collected was inconsistently deposited into the revenue bank account.

“Upon review of the bank deposit slips, we noted that cash amounting to $17,215 and $13,890 was allowed to accumulate in the two deposit examples cited in this finding. This appeared to be a common occurrence at the Miami Consulate.

“Upon inquiry as to the safeguarding of cash, it was revealed that the cash held was being kept in the desk drawer of the revenue supervisor.

“This supervisor was responsible for safeguarding the cash at the end of the day, checking the receiving officers’ daily receipts, writing up the bank deposit slips, depositing the case and posting the revenue transactions to the general ledger.

“One person performing all of these functions presents a significant segregation of duties issue in the revenue process.”

In some instances, cash was being held at the office for 21 days, 17 days and 16 days. The largest holding period was 28 days.

Mr Bastian recommended that management implement strong controls around the safeguarding of the government’s cash.

He said: “Whenever an employee has custody of cash and cash equivalents there is a risk of loss through employee errors and/or misappropriation of the asset if the appropriate monitoring is not occurring.”

He said policies and procedures around the handling of assets should be documented and implemented among other improvements.

An official at the consulate office could not be reached up to press time. However, Minister of Foreign Affairs Darren Henfield said the officers in question are no longer employed at the consulate.