Senior Political Reporter
The Housing Ministry is investigating issues from 2011 to 2015 concerning “ghost” houses costing $789 million which taxpayers paid for, and for which the physical structures cannot be found. A probe is also underway into a missing $180.5 million on the repayment of a loan.
Housing Minister Camille Robinson-Regis spoke of the issues duringThursday’s 2024 Budget debate in Parliament. She said the issues were cited by KPMG, the auditors of the Housing Development Corporation in a 2013 audit report.
Robinson-Regis said one of the “bugbears” of the State enterprises has been the inability to complete or submit audits and the HDC is no exception.
She said the auditors have only just concluded several years of audits because in many instances, “we got qualified audits because things were not found that were claimed and money that was said to be existing was not existing and so we had to get a number of qualified audits.”
“What was even more alarming was the inability of the auditors to verify the existence of housing units allegedly constructed to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars during the period 2011-2015.”
Robinson-Regis quoted from KPMG’s 2013 audit report.
“The Corporation has not prepared a comprehensive inventory of its housing units available for sale. There is an unanalysed sum of approximately $789 million representing cost of housing units that could not be attributed to identifiable physical structures.”
The auditors further stated, “We were also unable to obtain underlying documentary support for a sample of the construction cost. Consequently we are unable to perform audit tests to ascertain the accuracy and existence of the reporting inventory.”
Robinson-Regis said, “So what this means is that there were buildings allegedly constructed but they could not find. So the taxpayer paid for ‘ghost houses’.”
Robinson-Regis further quoted from the report: “Management has also not provided underlying documentation supporting the repayment terms of a loan payable from the National Lotteries Control Board (NLCB). Consequently, we are unable to satisfy ourselves that the entire balance is appropriately classified as non current ...”
Robinson-Regis said the report went on to state as follows:
“We have been unable to obtain appropriate and sufficient evidence of the existence and valuation of $180.566,98(m), reported within loans receivable held at a financial institution.”
She told Parliament, “So we’re now trying to find out what this was all about but there’s nothing on the books or otherwise that tells us where this—if it was a loan from NLCB or a loan to NLCB. So we’re investigating this. And they (UNC) want to advise us on how to run the country!”