– as Lall details financial discrepancies
Region Four REO Shafdar Ali was released on station bail yesterday shortly after Local Government and Regional Development Minister Kellawan Lall read findings from a report on the region which indicated financial discrepancies amounting to some $100 million.
Ali’s attorney Khemraj Ramjattan confirmed that he was released on $100,000 station bail just around noon yesterday. An arrest warrant had been issued for the Regional Executive Officer last Friday.
Lall, while Ali was still in police custody yesterday morning, conducted a press conference during which he addressed “inaccuracies and misrepresentations of some facts” in media reports about investigations into the Region Four financial inaccuracies.
The minister said he had asked that an investigation be carried out by the Auditor General based on some documents that were culled from the Integrated Financial Management Accounting System (IFMAS). Lall explained that IFMAS was a database which keeps records of every transaction made by all ten administrative regions. The information inputted to this database goes centrally to the Ministry of Finance and a copy is sent to Lall’s ministry.
Periodically, the information stored in IFMAS is scrutinised and sometimes “red flags” are noticed.
“These red flags,” Lall explained, “would indicate to us that perhaps something out of the normal is happening.”
These red flags would be examined, he said. However, the minister noted that because there are thousands of transactions it is an extremely difficult task to always keep everything monitored.
Examination of the Region Four transactions, Lall continued, showed that only one person was supplying Region Four with goods and services in areas like maintenance and the supply of various items to the region.
The cost of the items and services supplied amounted to more than $100 million. For some of the items needed the ‘three quotes system” was used for selection but most of the time the region’s Tender Board decided who would supply what.
Lall said the information gathered from IFMAS was submitted to the Auditor General and he has since received a preliminary report. However, additional information has been submitted and investigations are continuing.
The preliminary report from the Auditor General recommended that the REO, RDC expediter Bharrat Persaud and the secretary of Tender Board be disciplined accordingly and that the police be called in to further investigate the matter. It was as a result of this recommendation that police were informed and Ali subsequently sought.
Lall from the records examined and the interviews conducted, there appeared to be a total breakdown of internal controls and collusion with the supplier and officials of the RDC.
Quotations, Lall continued as he read from the report, were attached to payment vouchers which did not appear to be from the actual businesses and there were several breaches in the procurement procedures. In addition, payments were made for supplies which were never received by the region. Further, payments were processed for other suppliers and prices were inflated to exhaust the funds remaining at year end which is in contravention of the financial regulations.
“It is inconceivable that the REO did not notice that one supplier was supplying every item to the region when he signed over 100 requisitions” to purchase from this supplier, Lall read.
With regard to the supplier, Lall reported: “An examination of her premises shows that she doesn’t have a store. She’s not known to be a reputable supplier of the type of goods she had tendered for. She won all the contracts… She supplied things for the schools, hospitals; stoves, fans and so on. It seems as though she will be given money in advance to purchase these things because she doesn’t have them in stock… That is essentially what is going on…”
During budget debates this year, Lall noted, Minister of Finance Ashni Singh and all other ministers stressed that from this year “we are going to scrutinize our performance in a more aggressive way so that we get our money’s worth.
“It’s going to happen not only in my ministry but in all ministries. We are increasing our budget and spending more and more money. We need to see that there is full accountability. I have not yet finished assessing the performance of the other regions. I am in the process of doing that. I hope I don’t see any replication of what is happening in Region Four.”
