The National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is exchanging information with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana (ICAG) for its probe of a complaint on the conflict of interest created by the appointment of Geetanjali Singh, the wife of Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh to the post of Audit Director at the Audit Office.
Chairman of the PAC Carl Greenidge told Stabroek News that the parliamentary body had written the ICAG registering its concern about the situation which would see Mrs Singh overseeing the work of agencies for which her husband is in charge. The minister is a chartered accountant and hence a member of the ICAG.
Speaking to Stabroek News on Monday, Greenidge confirmed that that PAC has received a request for further information from the ICAG and he has supplied this. The APNU parliamentarian added that the ICAG and the PAC are exchanging information.
In another complaint to the ICAG in early July, a member of the body, Robert McRae outlined how the Minister and his wife were in a conflict of interest and conflict of duty situation. McRae said that since Dr. Singh’s appointment in 2006 as the senior Minister of Finance, a conflict of interest situation was created with the Audit Office where Mrs. Singh was the most senior qualified accountant.
He said that compounding the situation is the fact that Dr. Singh is also Chairman of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited which is audited by the Audit Office of Guyana. McRae, while saying that the responsibility is usually on the auditor to remove himself or herself from the conflict, argued that Dr. Singh knew or ought to have known that that by accepting the appointment he was being placed in a position of conflict and hence should have taken steps to prevent such a situation.
McRae told the ICAG one of the precepts of the profession is that a member must remove himself (or herself) from any situation which threatens his or her independence and puts him or her in a position where he or she has a conflict of interest which has been defined to include a conflict of duties. Up to last week, the ICAG had not responded to McRae’s complaint.
Meanwhile, speaking of the PAC’s deliberations on Monday, Greenidge said that the only matter dealt with was the budget for the Audit Office. “We looked at the budget for the Audit Office. It has to be sent to the Ministry of Finance by August 20. Everything else has to be dropped,” he said. He pointed out that due to the National Assembly going into recess from this week, there was no time left to deal with any other issues on the PAC’s agenda. These, he said, will be addressed when Parliament reconvenes in October. Key among the other issues is the appointment of staff to the Audit Office, which the opposition hopes to have reversed.
