Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

Gov­ern­ment and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass ap­pear to be at log­ger­heads over an er­ror de­tect­ed in T&T’s 2023 rev­enue da­ta.

A Gov­ern­ment mo­tion to ex­tend the time to present in­for­ma­tion to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al was passed in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day night, af­ter Ram­dass al­leged­ly re­fused to ac­cept in­for­ma­tion seek­ing to cor­rect a $2.6 bil­lion un­der­state­ment of T&T’s rev­enue for 2023.

The sit­u­a­tion – where nu­mer­ous ap­proach­es by Fi­nance Min­istry and Trea­sury of­fi­cials to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al were re­ject­ed – was de­scribed in Par­lia­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour as, “… a very bizarre sit­u­a­tion aris­ing from the fact that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al has re­fused in fla­grant con­tra­ven­tion of her statu­to­ry and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion and Ex­che­quer Act to ac­cept the cor­rect ma­te­r­i­al from the Fi­nance Min­istry’s Trea­sury Di­vi­sion as part of her au­dit”.

Gov­ern­ment, at one point, sent the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter but that al­so failed and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al pub­lished T&T’s ac­counts for 2023 mi­nus the cor­rect­ed fig­ures - prompt­ing Gov­ern­ment’s mo­tion.

The is­sue has now spot­light­ed re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Ram­dass.

The mo­tion was passed at 8.45 pm by 19 Gov­ern­ment votes to 14 Op­po­si­tion votes.

The mo­tion, in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s name, stat­ed that it was nec­es­sary, in re­spect of the fi­nan­cial ac­counts for 2023, that the pe­ri­od of time spec­i­fied un­der Sec­tions 24 and 25 of the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act (69:01) be ex­tend­ed. These per­tain to the pe­ri­ods when the Trea­sury must send the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al ac­counts.

De­bate arose af­ter the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s 2023 re­ports on T&T’s ac­counts were list­ed on yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment agen­da for pre­sen­ta­tion by Im­bert. When the item was called for pre­sen­ta­tion, Im­bert didn’t present the re­ports.

In­stead, he de­liv­ered a state­ment which not­ed - as the mo­tion stat­ed - that the time­lines for the sub­mis­sion of ac­counts by the Trea­sury and the prepa­ra­tion of the re­port of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al could be ex­tend­ed, if nec­es­sary, with Par­lia­ment’s ap­proval.

Im­bert said the task of prepar­ing T&T’s pub­lic ac­counts is a mam­moth ex­er­cise in­volv­ing hun­dreds of pub­lic ser­vants.

“There’s the pos­si­bil­i­ty that er­rors may be made along the way and fur­ther time may be need­ed to cor­rect these er­rors.”

He added that for the fi­nan­cial year 2023, an ex­ten­sion of time “has been de­ter­mined by the var­i­ous pub­lic of­fi­cials in­volved” to be re­quired at this time.

$2.6B rev­enue vari­ance er­ror

Im­bert said the re­quired re­port from the Trea­sury was sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al in Jan­u­ary 2024. But the root cause for the mo­tion was the de­tec­tion by se­nior pub­lic ser­vants that the state­ment of rev­enue which was sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al con­tained a sig­nif­i­cant vari­ance - the rev­enue for 2023 was un­der­stat­ed by $2.6B.

“And the fis­cal out­urn for 2023 was bet­ter than I re­port­ed in the 2023 Bud­get ex­er­cise,” Im­bert said.

He said the er­ror re­sult­ed from a new elec­tron­ic cheque clear­ing sys­tem which was not im­ple­ment­ed prop­er­ly by all con­cerned.

Im­bert said pub­lic ser­vants came to him in em­bar­rass­ment, as they felt it would be im­prop­er for rev­enue to be un­der­stat­ed by $2.6B.

“They had the courage to re­port to me they made a sig­nif­i­cant ma­te­r­i­al er­ror in record­ing the rev­enue for 2023 … they spent day and night try­ing to rec­on­cile the er­ror, I re­spect them for bring­ing it to my at­ten­tion,” he added.

He said le­gal ad­vice was that the time had not passed for sub­mis­sion of er­ra­ta in­di­cat­ing to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al that there were er­rors in the fig­ures.

Af­ter failed bids to com­mu­ni­cate with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to her, Im­bert said her April 15 re­ply stat­ed that the Fi­nance Min­istry was free to sub­mit a let­ter by noon on April 16 re­call­ing the pub­lic ac­counts sub­mit­ted in Jan­u­ary, con­firm­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed was in­ac­cu­rate and pro­vid­ing the re­vised pub­lic ac­counts.

He said the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts sub­mit­ted the in­for­ma­tion on time.

“No­body an­tic­i­pat­ed the 2023 re­ports would then be pub­lished with­out the re­vised ac­counts. It was on­ly two days ago we learned the au­dit­ed ac­counts were pre­pared with­out the cor­rect­ed in­for­ma­tion that was giv­en to her,” he said.

Im­bert said the pub­lic might de­scribe the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s ac­tion as bizarre, as the pub­lic ser­vants “… dis­cov­ered a big er­ror, tried to in­form the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al de­cid­ed not to be in­formed”.

AG slams Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s con­duct

Ar­mour said the er­ror was dis­cov­ered in Feb­ru­ary and Trea­sury, In­land Rev­enue and Bud­get Di­vi­sion of­fi­cials did in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He main­tained the ac­counts were sub­mit­ted on time and lat­er cor­rect­ed.

How­ev­er, Ar­mour said, “Trea­sury of­fi­cials seek­ing to go to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice with the cor­rect­ed in­for­ma­tion were de­nied en­try!

“So alarm­ing was the con­duct of the of­fice hold­er of this high con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter came to me for ad­vice, which I gave, in­clud­ing by pro­vid­ing two em­i­nent coun­sel whose ad­vice led to a six-page pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter be­ing de­liv­ered to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on April 15.”

Not­ing the of­fi­cials’ failed ap­proach­es to com­mu­ni­cate with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, Ar­mour added, “It was noth­ing short of bizarre!”

The let­ter to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­port­ed­ly cau­tioned her about the grave im­pli­ca­tions that would be­fall T&T’s econ­o­my if she pub­lished a re­port based on er­ro­neous in­for­ma­tion.

Ar­mour said the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­ply quot­ed the sec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion which states that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al shall not be sub­ject to di­rec­tion/con­trol of any oth­er per­son or au­thor­i­ty. How­ev­er, he said she re­lied on that sec­tion wrong­ly.

Ar­mour said it was re­mark­able that in 2024 in T&T, an evolved democ­ra­cy, there could be “this kind of con­duct from a se­nior high con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice hold­er”.

Ar­mour slammed the sit­u­a­tion in T&T in which of­fice­hold­ers don’t un­der­stand what the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers means, since it didn’t mean that one high of­fice isn’t al­lowed to speak to an­oth­er branch.

The Act and the mo­tion

Sec­tion 24 of the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act man­dates that with­in a pe­ri­od of four months af­ter Sep­tem­ber 30th in each year, the Trea­sury shall trans­mit to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, ac­counts show­ing ful­ly T&T’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion at De­cem­ber 31. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al shall have these ex­am­ined and au­dit­ed with­in sev­en months af­ter Sep­tem­ber 30th in each year.

Sec­tion 25 (1) al­lows that the pe­ri­od pro­vid­ed for the trans­mis­sion of the fi­nan­cial ac­counts by the Trea­sury to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al may be ex­tend­ed to a longer pe­ri­od, as Par­lia­ment may, via res­o­lu­tion, ap­point. It sim­i­lar­ly pro­vides that the pe­ri­od for the ex­am­i­na­tion/au­dit­ing of the ac­counts may be ex­tend­ed.

The mo­tion called for the pe­ri­od of time un­der Sec­tion 24 to be ex­tend­ed from four months af­ter Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2023, to eight months af­ter Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2023. It al­so called for the pe­ri­od of time un­der sec­tion 25(1) to be ex­tend­ed from sev­en months af­ter Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2023, to eleven months af­ter Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2023.

Min­istry’s failed out­reach to Au­di­tor Gen­er­al

Fi­nance’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary re­ceived no re­sponse to their March 27 let­ter.

* The PS sent e-mailed cor­re­spon­dence on March 28, al­so on April 5 and April 8.

* The Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts sent an April 8 email with a com­pact disc with the cor­rect­ed in­for­ma­tion.

* On April 9 fur­ther at­tempts were made by the Fi­nance Min­istry to ap­proach the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. Calls went unan­swered.

* Of­fi­cers who went to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice were told there was no one there to re­ceive the com­pact disc and to re­turn on April 11.

* On April 11, the as­sis­tant Au­di­tor Gen­er­al told the of­fi­cers he was in­struct­ed by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to ac­cept on­ly the com­pact disc with the orig­i­nal pub­lic ac­counts but not the one with the amend­ed pub­lic ac­counts.

* At the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­quest, the three of­fi­cers met the de­part­ment’s se­nior le­gal of­fi­cer, who lat­er al­so said she couldn’t ac­cept the amend­ed pub­lic ac­counts disc.