Imbert rejects calls for probe into his conduct in Auditor General dispute

Minister of Finance Colm Imbert has rubbished calls by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar for an investigation into his actions with regard to the impasse between public officers at the Ministry of Finance and Auditor General Jaiwantie Ramdass over 2023 public accounts.

In a statement on March 5, Imbert said Persad-Bissessar’s claims were a “diatribe” and admonished her for “grasping at straws” and “making up stories about missing money.”

Persad-Bissessar had claimed in a statement on February 28 that the minister had attempted to intimidate Ramdass in a political attack that backfired.

She was referring to an independent probe commissioned by the Ministry of Finance and announced by Imbert on May 7, 2024, into the circumstances surrounding a $2.6 billion understatement in the 2023 public accounts and the reporting of same to the Auditor General.

The probe initially sought to investigate the Auditor General’s conduct in the matter in addition to details on the source of the error.

Ramdass, however, filed for judicial review over terms of reference of the probe. She claimed the independence of her office insulated it from the Ministry of Finance’s attempt to investigate her conduct.

Her judicial review was in turn challenged by the Attorney General and Minister of Finance. That challenge was eventually turned back by the Privy Council clearing the way for Ramdass’s judicial review to go forward.

On February 28, a statement from the office of the Attorney General announced that the remaining unchallenged terms of reference in the probe had been completed by the investigation team.

It said, “The investigation team has provided its final report with respect to the permitted terms of reference, which helpfully discloses what went wrong and satisfactorily explained the understatement…

“Given these developments, the Cabinet has determined that the continuation of proceedings in CV2024 – 01720 Jaiwantie Ramdass vs Minister of Finance and The Cabinet of The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago will not further inform the issues already addressed by the investigative committee’s findings, while incurring further legal costs and judicial time while these proceedings are ongoing.

“Accordingly, the Cabinet has taken the decision not to proceed further with the terms of reference (of the investigation) referred to above pertaining to the Auditor General.”

Persad-Bissessar also commented on the probe and eventual Privy Council ruling in a statement on February 28.

She said, “(This) should never have been the subject of an investigation by the government because she (Ramdass) did absolutely nothing wrong.

“The half-baked investigative report the government says it received was a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money. As noted by the Privy Council, Mr Imbert himself drafted the terms of reference, hand-picked the investigators, and ordered them to report to him. In circumstances where Mr Imbert’s conduct and integrity have been called into question, this reeks of bias and political smart-manism. It’s a classic case of playing smart with foolishness.”

She added now that the probe has been dropped, the Prime Minister should investigate Imbert’s conduct and demand he answer “where the missing money has gone.”

She also asked why the challenge to Ramdass’s judicial review reached as far as the Privy Council, which would have required legal fees, airfare cost and hotel expenses.

“There is far more in the political mortar than just the pestle. We demand answers from the government on whether Imbert’s conduct will be the subject of an independent investigation, and the amount of money wasted on this matter.”

In Imbert’s response to Persad-Bissessar on May 5, he explained that the Auditor General produced a report on statements of the treasury, appropriation accounts of individual accounting officers, statements of receipts and disbursements and financial statements of individual administering officers of funds for the financial year on an annual basis.

“Mrs Persad-Bissessar is well aware of the fact that the perpetration of the annual public accounts and submission of these accounts to the Auditor General was delegated to the public officers in the Treasury many decades ago.

“She is also well aware that the Minister of Finance has no role to play in the preparation or submission of these accounts and does not feature in the audit documents.”

In 2024, the deadline to submit the Auditor General’s report was on January 31. But a $2.6 billion discrepancy was discovered by the Finance Ministry in February.

Attempts by Ministry of Finance officials to correct the error through submission of updated accounts to the Auditor General were initially refused by Ramdass until the intervention of the Attorney General in April.

Ramdass later submitted a report on the accounts to the ministry and Parliament but Imbert, who was not satisfied that the corrected accounts were properly factored into the Auditor General’s report, refused to lay it in Parliament. Instead, Government extended the deadline for the submission of the report in an effort to have the corrections properly considered.

Imbert eventually laid the Auditor General’s original report on the public accounts for 2023 in Parliament on May 24.

A special report also authored by the Auditor General on the accounts, this time addressing the discrepancy identified by the Finance Ministry, was laid in Parliament on September 9. Imbert, however, noted he felt the special report still had not addressed the core issue surrounding the $2.6 billion understatement.

On May 5, Imbert said the entire situation stemmed from an “unfortunate accounting error” made by officials at Central Bank on February 8, 2023.

Imbert’s release said one of the largest occurrences of this error was a transfer of data that was being handled by an interface software component based on Microsoft Excel.

He said when the data was transferred, instead of transferring the numbers in dollar values, it multiplied the figures by 100.

He said the figures were from advice on tax refunds provided to the Treasury Division by Central Bank.

“Because the tax refunds had been overstated by Central Bank on February 8 by a factor of 100, $26 million in refunds was incorrectly posted as $2.6 billion in refunds.”

He noted that the accounting error was discovered ministry officials and not by the Auditor General’s office.

“It was discovered by personnel in the budget division doing their usual year-end review… after the accounts were submitted to the Auditor General.”

“The error was not discovered until it was too late,” the minister said. “The actual revenue reported by the treasury on January 31, 2024, was $2.6 billion less than it really was.”

He said the public servants made several attempts to bring the error to the Auditor General’s attention.

The minister added that the Treasury had reported that all revenue collected in 2023 was since accounted for.

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