Pan in Pain - Au­dit of steel­band body ex­pos­es glar­ing non-com­pli­ance

Fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment, an abysmal fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds, fi­nan­cial ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, and glar­ing non-com­pli­ance were un­cov­ered in an Ernst and Young (EY) au­dit re­port con­duct­ed by Ernst and Young (EY) on Pan Trin­ba­go’s op­er­a­tions over five years.

The “pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial” re­port was hand­ed over to the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the Arts in April 2018 and has been hid­den in plain sight on the Par­lia­ment web­site for al­most a year. It came up for dis­cus­sion at Pan Trin­ba­go’s An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing on No­vem­ber 3 but ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al mem­bers, but was shot down by pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore. How­ev­er, she has de­nied that claim.

The au­dit paints a gloomy pic­ture about Pan Trin­ba­go’s fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing the five years, while ex­ter­nal au­di­tors Pan­el Kerr Fos­ter (PKF) said there was “sig­nif­i­cant doubt on the as­so­ci­a­tion’s abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue as a go­ing con­cern.”

The time­frame cov­ered in the EY re­port was 2013 to 2017 dur­ing the tenure of for­mer pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az. He and key mem­bers of the Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive, which in­clud­ed then Fi­nance Man­ag­er An­tho­ny Mc Quilkin, Man­ag­er of Ad­min­is­tra­tion Richard Forteau, Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tive Of­fi­cer He­len Scant­er­bury-James, Trea­sur­er An­drew Sal­vador, As­sis­tant Of­fice Man­ag­er Melville Bryan, Ac­count­ing As­sis­tant Di­ane De Cu­ruew-Ri­d­ley and Ac­counts Clerk Tasha Je­re­mie, all held dis­cus­sions with EY as they at­tempt­ed to “ob­tain an over­all un­der­stand­ing of Pan Trin­ba­go’s ma­jor op­er­a­tional and ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es.”

EY al­so spoke with of­fi­cials from KPF, Mark Su­perville and Camille Prov­i­dence, as well as from Daniel Lam­bert, CEO of FCL Fi­nan­cial Lim­it­ed, and em­ploy­ee Tam­mie Babb.

EY not­ed that the “as­so­ci­a­tion’s net cur­rent as­sets were neg­a­tive for the en­tire pe­ri­od of re­view, with net cur­rent as­sets falling to neg­a­tive $18.8 m by the end of 2017.”

Those fig­ures did not in­clude ad­di­tion­al li­a­bil­i­ties of $9.1 m owed by In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence and Panora­ma (ICP), a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Pan Trin­ba­go. Had that been in­clud­ed, by the end of 2017 the steel­band body’s debt could have in­creased to $27.9 m.

Key find­ings in the au­dit in­clud­ed un­ex­plained pay­ments to Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee (CEC) mem­bers. Be­tween 2013 and 2017, 15 of them col­lect­ed $13.4m in emol­u­ments al­though Pan Trin­ba­go was con­sis­tent­ly in the red and dire need of funds.

Di­az col­lect­ed some $2.25m, while Forteau was paid $1.68m, Mc Quilkin $1.54m and for­mer vice pres­i­dent Bry­on Ser­rette $1.44m and trustee Al­lan Au­gus­tus just over $1m. Oth­er CEC mem­bers re­ceived sums in the vicin­i­ty of $210,485- $996,330.

EY’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions found that Pan Trin­ba­go’s con­sti­tu­tion did not pro­vide guid­ance on com­pen­sa­tion pack­age for CEC mem­bers. 

Ar­ti­cle 7 Part B of the con­sti­tu­tion states: “No elect­ed po­si­tion to the CEC shall be com­pen­sat­ed by way of salary. How­ev­er, the CEC shall have the pow­er to de­ter­mine the sum of a stipend and/or al­lowance to be paid to its mem­bers for the re­im­burse­ment of rea­son­able au­tho­rized fi­nan­cial ex­pen­di­ture in­curred on be­half of the as­so­ciates.”

The EY re­port stat­ed: “Based on our re­view of the CEC meet­ing min­utes pro­vid­ed for the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 2012- Ju­ly 2016, there was no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the month­ly stipends/al­lowances for the CEC mem­bers were dis­cussed and agreed.”

The firm said it was un­able to “con­firm if the amounts paid to its mem­bers dur­ing the pe­ri­od of re­view were for­mal­ly ap­proved by the CEC.”

This lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion made it dif­fi­cult to track down par­tic­u­lar pay­ments. A re­view of Gen­er­al Ledger Ac­count #60116 in­di­cat­ed an in­crease in the month­ly al­lowance paid to CEC mem­bers from March 2015 but “no sup­port­ing doc­u­ments were pro­vid­ed for re­view.”

Apart from the stipend, CEC mem­bers were al­so part of the man­age­ment team and re­ceived salaries, con­tract fees, hon­o­raria, em­ploy­ee bonus­es, over­time salaries, sub­sis­tence and trav­el­ling al­lowances, gra­tu­ity and leave en­ti­tle­ment in lieu.

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By Mark Bassant

Trinidad & Tobago Guardian