“We are now recovering from a narrative of an organisation involved in putting money in their pockets.” That’s the description which current Pan Trinbago chair Beverly Ramsey-Moore put on the last executive in light of an audit report published exclusively in the T&T Guardian yesterday which exposed tales of financial mismanagement, misappropriation of funds, financial irregularities and glaring non-compliance.
The audit, conducted by Ernst and Young on Pan Trinbago’s operations over five years, was handed to the Ministry of Community Development and the Arts in April 2018.
The report seemed to have been ignored despite the details which painted a gloomy picture of Pan Trinbago’s financial activities.
There were allegations that the same Ramsey-Moore shot down a move to have to audit discussed at the annual general meeting on November 3. Ramsey-Moore had denied the claim but the issue was clearly bigger than the chair. Millions of dollars had been pumped into Pan Trinbago over the years and it got state land for construction of its headquarters in Trincity. Despite this, steelpan players were still owed a whopping $7.8 million in remittances.
Just why the report was left to gather dust by the Ministry of Community Development needed to be explained. It should not have been that year after year, taxpayers were forced to cough up millions to upkeep the steelband fraternity and those charged with the responsibility of ensuring that pan players and the nation benefited were instead benefiting from the largesse without a thought for the difficult economic times the country faced.
Key findings in the audit included unexplained payments to executive committee members, including that between 2013 and 2017, 15 members of the former executive led by Keith Diaz collected $13.4 million in emoluments although Pan Trinbago had consistently been in the red and in dire need of funds.
The former Diaz-led executive must be called upon to account for taxpayers’ money since there was nothing in Pan Trinbago’s constitution which spoke to compensation packages for committee members. In fact, executive members were only entitled to a stipend and/or allowance for reimbursement of reasonable authorised financial expenditure incurred.
This is public money and one would think that the Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley administration, which came into office as anti-corruption fighters, would have dealt with this issue head-on after receiving the audit report.
It does not matter under whose watch this occurred, whether UNC, PP or PNM. Investigate it and if there was fraud let the chips fall where they may. Having said that, as a country we cannot continue to pay big money for audits and investigations only to let things slide until the next time. The country just cannot afford it. PM Rowley and Madame Minister of Community Development, the ball is in your court.