Gail Alexan­der

A com­put­er serv­er crashed just be­fore the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion wip­ing out all the Com­mu­ni­ty Based En­vi­ron­ment and Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme’s (CEPEP) records for 2010 to 2015. Hun­dreds of files al­so went miss­ing, a con­tain­er was found out­side of an of­fice with de­stroyed files in it and a pre­vi­ous au­di­tor re­fus­es to re­turn CEPEP’s doc­u­ments.

This sit­u­a­tion faced CEPEP man­age­ment who took of­fice in 2016 and af­fect­ed their abil­i­ty to pro­duce au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee (PAEC) heard yes­ter­day.

Some of it was de­scribed as sab­o­tage by PAEC mem­bers Kei­th Scot­land and Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine when CEPEP of­fi­cials ap­peared be­fore them to dis­cuss the state com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial state­ments.

Scot­land, as well as Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry Des­dra Bas­combe and deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Fi­nance Min­istry Char­ran Nar­ine, all said CEPEP should take le­gal ac­tion against its pre­vi­ous au­di­tor, named as Hardy’s and As­so­ciates.

PAEC chair­man Wade Mark had ear­li­er chas­tised CEPEP of­fi­cials for non -sub­mis­sion of au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2014- 21. CEO Kei­th Ed­dy, not­ing the 2015 serv­er crash, said all fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion from 2010- 2015 was lost and it took two and a half years to ob­tain da­ta to re­build the sys­tems.

Ed­dy said there were al­so prob­lems with the pre­vi­ous au­di­tor who re­fused to re­turn CEPEP’s doc­u­ments. He said it took ad­di­tion­al time to bring in a new au­di­tor but state­ments from 2015 to cur­rent are be­ing com­plet­ed.

Mark, de­clar­ing the sit­u­a­tion was “in­de­fen­si­ble, in­ex­cus­able and in­tol­er­a­ble,” claimed CEPEP, which spent $1.5 bil­lion from 2015 to 2021, had “gone rogue”. But Ed­dy didn’t agree, cit­ing the hard­ships en­coun­tered.

CEPEP se­nior fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Gary Stod­dard said all fi­nan­cial ac­counts up to 2021 have been com­plet­ed and re­ports to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Fi­nance Min­istries are be­ing sub­mit­ted.

“So all cur­rent re­port­ing is up to date,” he said, point­ing out that in­for­ma­tion about the serv­er crash had been sent to the PAEC be­fore.

Ed­dy added that if CEPEP had got­ten back its doc­u­ments from the last au­di­tor, the sit­u­a­tion would have been re­solved.

“The on­ly thing we haven’t done is re­port them to ICATT,” he said

Bas­combe rec­om­mend­ed le­gal ac­tion against the au­di­tor as the on­ly way to re­cov­er CEPEP’s da­ta. She said the serv­er crash oc­curred just be­fore the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion when CEPEP was un­der the Hous­ing Min­istry.

Nar­ine, who said the Fi­nance Min­istry was aware of CEPEP’s prob­lems in­clud­ing the serv­er crash, agreed that le­gal ac­tion might be war­rant­ed.

Scot­land said the ac­counts are CEPEP’s prop­er­ty and the com­pa­ny needs to be more “bull­ish” with an er­rant au­di­tor.

Ed­dy said he would take Scot­land’s ad­vice: “I agree that those work­ing pa­pers do be­long to CEPEP, it’s not the au­di­tor’s. We’ll still go af­ter it to en­sure we have those work­ing pa­pers so we can al­ways have checks and bal­ances in place.”

PAEC mem­ber Renu­ka Sagaram­s­ingh-Sook­lal said the doc­u­ments were con­fi­den­tial and ex­pressed con­cern about what a “rogue au­di­tor” might do with the in­for­ma­tion

In re­sponse to a ques­tion from De­onar­ine about why no oth­er hard copy records were avail­able, Ed­dy said CEPEP’s new man­age­ment met the serv­er crash.

“No­body knew what hap­pened, you’d have to ask those who were there to say,” he said.

CEPEP se­nior in­ter­nal au­di­tor Ali­cia Austin in­ter­ject­ed: “I went in and looked for a lot of old doc­u­ments to aid in re­build­ing when we re­alised what had hap­pened and a lot of doc­u­ments were miss­ing, hun­dreds of doc­u­ments.”

Ed­dy added: “Al­so, we found a con­tain­er on the out­side where things were just de­stroyed. It was a haz­ard. We just don’t know, we can’t ac­count to tell you what would have hap­pened to that in­for­ma­tion.”

De­onar­ine told him: “Mr CEO, based on what you’re say­ing here, this is mak­ing me think this was pure sab­o­tage.”

Ed­dy said the doc­u­ments that were de­stroyed were from 2012-2015.

Scot­land said the “ghost” sit­u­a­tion was un­ac­cept­able and had ham­strung CEPEP’s abil­i­ty to pro­duce ac­counts. He said the PAEC need­ed to re­solve the mat­ter .

Scot­land asked what was done to pros­e­cute the sab­o­tage. Ed­dy said it wasn’t re­port­ed to the Fraud Squad, on­ly to the line min­istry.

“We must get to the bot­tom of this. When you see doc­u­ments in a drum that rais­es a red flag,” said Scot­land who added that the pre­vi­ous au­di­tor should al­so ac­count for CEPEP’s doc­u­ments and re­turn them.

“It’s not theirs. We need an en­quiry on this,” he said.

Mark said the PAEC would ask the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to do a foren­sic probe. He al­so said be­fore ac­tion is tak­en the PAEC would have ask the pre­vi­ous au­di­tor to ap­pear be­fore them. How­ev­er, Scot­land point­ed out that the au­di­tor might refuse so CEPEP should first act with­in a fort­night.

Ed­dy said CEPEP, as well as the new au­di­tors, wrote the pre­vi­ous au­di­tor but got no re­sponse. The pre­vi­ous au­di­tor had al­so re­fused to ap­pear be­fore a Par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee.