The Office of the Accountant General says it will fully cooperate with an ongoing audit ordered by Prime Minister John Briceño as scrutiny continues over government Smart Stream payment records that have drawn requests for disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
Public Service Union president Dean Flowers said he received the Accountant General’s response during the course of an interview and that it amounted to “absolutely nothing”.
“She is essentially passing the buck to the Auditor General,” Flowers said. “She refuses, in her response, to say whether she will be going through the SmartStream system, identify that pattern of payment by financial officers, and providing me with that information and the names of those finance officers who engaged in those practices.”
The Auditor General‘s response, Flowers said, followed a similar pattern, with that office telling the union it cannot share anything that could prejudice the ongoing investigation. Flowers rejected that reasoning, arguing that releasing the records to the union would not compromise the audit in any way. “If you are considering the evidence as facts, it does not matter who have a hold of those,” he said.
Flowers also took aim at what he described as a disappointing pattern among women appointed to senior positions of authority, saying he advocates strongly for women in leadership but finds it “disheartening” when those in power respond in a manner that protects the status quo rather than the public interest.
He suggested the responses from both the Accountant General and the Auditor General bear the hallmarks of legal advice from the Attorney General’s Ministry.
The PSU’s FOIA request centres on SmartStream payment records that the union alleges show a deliberate pattern of splitting large government payments into amounts below ten thousand dollars to avoid mandatory Treasury oversight. A practice that is currently linked to allegations of nepotism surrounding the family of Home Affairs Minister Oscar Mira.
