Last week the public rightfully raised a suspicious eye when activist Nigel Petillo caught a government vehicle dumping and burning a massive trove of documents. With the active public distrust in government, it doesn't take much to stoke a firestorm of controversy about burning the evidence. And that's just what Petillo's post did.
But, the next day, a release from the Ministry of Economic Transformation tried to allay public distrust when it said, quote, "The files that were being disposed of on Thursday have been physically verified by auditors and date back to 2010-2012. They have no relevance to any ongoing project or initiative."
But, were they really? 7News has obtained a memorandum from the Auditor General to the Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of the Economic Transformation dated June 09th. It basically asks who gave the order to destroy the documents and under what authority?
The memo asks pointedly, "Was approval obtained from the Accountant General for the destruction of records? "Which auditor provided a Destruction Certificate to go ahead with the destruction?
The memo also notes, quote, "Projects, grants and loans documentation are a significant part of source documents to audit the national financial statements. Therefore, we should be informed of what records are no longer available due to this action. This Office requires a list of documents that were destroyed."
It's a sharp rebuke to the M.E.T., already under scrutiny for careless project spending-and just last week, proudly claiming that the destroyed documents had been verified by auditors. Apparently, not the right auditors. We'll see where this one goes. ENDS
Email
Print