Supervisor Allegedly Destroyed Records During Audit

Auditor General Maria Rodriguez says some public officers are not just failing to produce financial records; they are destroying them. Tonight, she is raising serious concerns after her office found that documents needed for a recent audit had been shredded by an officer. In another case, Rodriguez says a supervisor destroyed records while auditors were already carrying out their work. She believes these incidents point to a deeper problem inside the public service: weak internal supervision and a lack of consequences. Here is how she explains it.

 

Maria Rodriquez, Auditor General

“A lack of supervision and laxity. That is it right there. If nobody is supervising the officer, the officer does what he wants. We just completed an audit, I wont say where, where we asked for documents and the officer said we shred it.”

 

Paul Lopez

“What do you mean they shred it?”

 

Maria Rodriquez

“They shred it, because they don’t see that it was necessary to keep. In our 2017-2018 annual report, I am not sure if you have had an opportunity to look at it, we informed that during an audit at the Golden Haven Rest Home the supervisor destroyed records while we were there and we reported it.”

 

Paul Lopez

“Are there more examples of you coming across documents being destroyed?”

 

Maria Rodriquez

“Yes, it seems like a norm to some officers that nobody tells them that you should not destroy records. But there is a section in the regulations that specifies that the accounting general is the only officer who can authorize the destruction of records. And there is a timeline to keep records, some up to forty-five years. So, if you are just destroying because nobody told that I can’t destroy it, then you are not following the regulations.”

Paul Lopez

“Do you weigh these records on a scale in terms of most important to least important?”

Maria Rodriquez

“They are all important. They are all important. We cannot say that one record is less important than the other.”

 

Auditor General Says Complaints Often Met With Silence

 

What happens when public officers are accused of deliberately destroying financial records that auditors need to do their job? According to Auditor General Maria Rodriguez, her office files a formal complaint with the CEO of the relevant ministry. But she says that is often where the accountability stops, because those complaints rarely get a response. Rodriguez says the Joint Public Accounts Committee also has a role to play in following up on those concerns and ensuring that serious findings do not simply disappear into bureaucracy.

 

Maria Rodriquez, Auditor General

“The normal process is to inform the chief executive officer. This is what we found. We need clarification, why did it occurred and what are you going to do about it. Unfortunately, most often, we do not get responses from Chief Executive Officers. Mind you, the regulations say that they must respond to our audit queries. We don’t, for the most part, we don’t. However, even when that does not get a response, we forward that query to the Financial Secretary and the Accounting General who then are responsible for following up on the query that we make. At that point, if they follow up or not, we move past that and make sure to put it in our annual report for the JPAC. So, it has been elevated now to the JPAC to hold these people responsible. My concern is that while the JPAC is able to surcharge, because they are able to surcharge, my understanding is that the process is passed on back to the Financial Secretary. So, the executive surcharging the executive it does not really seem to be a good process.”

 

Notably, there have not been any official reports of any being charged or fined for destroying official public records in recent history.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

Watch the full newscast here: