For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira has ques­tioned the gov­ern­ment’s stance with re­gard to Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass.

In a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Nunez-Tesheira said it was “dis­turb­ing” that Ram­dass was re­port­ed­ly be­ing de­nied ac­cess by the Cen­tral Bank to the Elec­tron­ic Cheque Clear­ing Sys­tem.

This, the for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter said, has had an ad­verse im­pact on the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s abil­i­ty to per­form a prop­er au­dit and check of the sys­tem, which led to a $2.6 bil­lion dis­crep­an­cy in the rev­enue fig­ures for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

She said, “I can­not un­der­stand why the min­is­ter is telling her to go and talk to the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor. She does not want to talk to him. That is not her job, her job is gov­erned by the law. Her job is when you make a re­ceiv­able or a debt that you have proof of such.”

She con­tin­ued, “This is a lot of mon­ey. It’s not like if it’s 100 mil­lion, which is still a lot, but $2.6 bil­lion is a lot, a lot of mon­ey. And she has a right to in­sist on be­ing giv­en ac­cess.”

Nunez-Tesheira said based on the re­port she had read the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al was do­ing her job

“The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is talk­ing about talk­ing with the Cen­tral Bank. There’s noth­ing to talk about. She has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that the law puts on her. He has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty un­der the Cen­tral Bank Act. And the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance al­so has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. She is do­ing her statu­to­ry du­ty,”

How­ev­er, Nunez-Tesheira said she was not sur­prised by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s ap­proach to the is­sue.

“His re­sponse is be­ing dila­to­ry, try­ing to de­flect and tell her to go speak to the Cen­tral bank Gov­er­nor. She does not need to speak with the Cen­tral bank Gov­er­nor, she has been very clear on what she wants, ‘ said Nunez-Tesheira.

Ten­sions be­tween the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al came to pub­lic at­ten­tion in April af­ter an ex­ten­sion was re­quest­ed by Min­is­ter Im­bert to re­port on fi­nan­cial ac­counts for fis­cal 2023.

He ex­plained then that Ram­dass did not ac­cept doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed to her con­cern­ing $2.6 bil­lion, which was not ac­count­ed for in ini­tial doc­u­ments.

The mat­ter has since been sub­ject to a le­gal bat­tle and is set to be heard by the Privy Coun­cil.