Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mix-up that caused an im­passe be­tween the of­fices of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and Fi­nance Min­istry is mere­ly a fact-find­ing mis­sion.

At a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall-Port-of-Spain, Im­bert re­it­er­at­ed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which will be led by for­mer High Court Judge David Har­ris, will con­tin­ue de­spite threats of an in­junc­tion by Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass’ at­tor­neys, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC.

Yes­ter­day, Jai­wantie’s at­tor­neys filed for im­me­di­ate re­lief with the mat­ter to be heard to­day.

Im­bert said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion’s aim is 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.

He said with a switch from a man­u­al to an elec­tron­ic cheque-clear­ing sys­tem, which came in Feb­ru­ary last year, the er­ror was made, and it was be­ing ad­dressed in­ter­nal­ly be­tween the Cen­tral Bank and the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

“Cer­tain­ly, this is a wake-up call, that’s for sure. In terms of why this was not done be­fore, the er­ror did not present it­self be­fore. This thing had been go­ing on for a year ap­par­ent­ly and what was hap­pen­ing was that the IT spe­cial­ists in the Cen­tral Bank and Board of In­land Rev­enue were com­mu­ni­cat­ing on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to re­solve the is­sues. They did not es­ca­late up the chain,” Im­bert said, adding that it was on­ly when it was time for the au­dit re­port to be com­plet­ed that the two of­fices were made aware of the mix-up.

He added that he was al­so not sure who bought and or cre­at­ed the soft­ware, what oth­er er­rors may have been made and the cost of the sys­tem. Those ques­tions, and more, he said, are what the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will hope­ful­ly an­swer.

He said the Cen­tral Bank and the Board of In­land Rev­enue have strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty claus­es that car­ry strict penal­ties, so some of the in­for­ma­tion may not be as read­i­ly avail­able.

Im­bert re­it­er­at­ed that at the end of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, if any de­ci­sion is to be tak­en, it will be but there would be no legal­ly bind­ing out­come from the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He stressed that this mix-up must not re-oc­cur and hopes the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will pro­vide the nec­es­sary an­swer to as­sist in as­sur­ing that.

“We have to find out whether the new cheque-clear­ing sys­tem is work­ing prop­er­ly, is it ef­fec­tive? Is it fit for pur­pose? Should it be con­tin­ued with? Should we re­vert to the man­u­al sys­tem? We don’t want this to hap­pen again.”

He said the oth­er as­pect of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will fo­cus on at­tempts made to cor­rect the er­ror by the pub­lic ser­vants.