Auditor General Jaiwantie Ramdass needs support and assistance.
Those are the words of Attorney General Reginald Armour, SC.
He said that recent developments which have placed her office in the spotlight are not indicative of an attack by Government.
The ongoing saga stems from the Finance Ministry’s attempt to alert the Auditor General to a $2.6 billion understatement of Government’s 2023 revenue, which was blamed on a digital system dealing with tax refund cheques.
Finance Minister Colm Imbert told Parliament that staff at the ministry attempted to correct the error but the Auditor General initially declined, since the January 31 deadline had passed and an apparent issue on the date of the new accounts that were submitted. Eventually, she agreed to accept it after a pre-action protocol letter was issued to her.
During his contribution in the Senate yesterday on a motion to extend the reporting period under Sections 24 (1) and 25 (1) of the Exchequer and Audit Act Chapter 69:01, Armour explained that it would have been a conflict of interest if he had advised the Auditor General, as he was already engaged with ministry officials.
“Separation of power does not mean that you wrap yourself in an ivory tower and decline to engage with the other arms of State. It means that you must engage but in the engagement with each other, you respect the territory so as to not encroach on each other and in the Treasury Division beseeching the Auditor General, who clearly was not getting good advice, and I would encourage the Auditor General to proceed from here on with good advice,” he said.
Government passed a motion in the lower house on Friday seeking to extend the time to present information to the Auditor General.
The Auditor General was seeking the Attorney General’s legal advice on the submission of the Finance Ministry’s amended report where the error was detected. Armour explained that there would have been no breaches by the Auditor General if she had considered the amended accounts submitted to her containing the over $2 billion error.
“There was nothing untoward, nothing illegal, nothing wrong about the Treasury notifying the Auditor General of errors in the accounts and providing her with information which would have allowed corrections to be made. It was their duty. If they had failed to do that, which they tried over two months to do, they would have been in dereliction of their statutory duty,” Armour explained.
The motion was eventually passed with 26 Government votes for and six UNC votes against. Independent Senator Sunity Maharaj abstained while the other Independents voted yes.