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The Tale And the Trail Of The KHMH Credit Card
posted (July 6, 2012)
Tonight we continue looking at the KHMH Special Audit Report from April 2010 to December 2011.

The matter at hand tonight is the use of the facility's credit card. It was reserved for the hospitals top two administrators, the CEO and the CFO - and the auditor found a number of irregularities.

We look at them tonight:..

Jules Vasquez reporting
The KHMH has a corporate credit card with a limit of twenty thousand dollars. The audit notes that only two persons, The Director of Finance, Carlos Perera, and CEO Gary Longsworth, are the only two persons authorized to make purchases with the card.

These are the credit card purchases for which no receipt was seen - they take up four pages of the addendum to the audit.

They show assorted credit card charges in Belize, Chetumal, Mexico and Houston, Texas - all for which the auditor says there were no receipts.

The auditor laments that: "For example, no receipts were provided for the entire months of April, May and June 2010. In addition, there were also receipts missing in respect of the year 2011. In the absence of these receipts, we would like to know how the KHMH accounted for the expenses."

And then these charges including 706 US dollars for a Tuxedo and 239 US dollars for a first class upgrade on Continental Airlines.

These ones are for per diem and in transit expenses by the Director of Finances - and the auditor notes that he seemed to have been double dipping.

The audit states, quote: "We also observed that the Director of Finance was approved a per diem allowance of $4,400.00 in connection with in- transit and hotel expenses for the period 28/10 to 7/11/11. This allowance was issued to him through KHMH's cheque number 007129 dated 24/10/11. We established that the allowance was given to him as he was to make an official visit to Taiwan. Nevertheless, we were not given an explanation why KHMH gave the Director of Finance the allowance on 24/10/11 and subsequently allowed him to make additional per diem allowance charges to the credit card on the 28/10/11."

And then again, the audit notes, that KHMH issued a payment of $650.00 to the Director of Finance for attending a conference in Chicago on 15/4/11….We also noted that on the 13/4/2011 the Director of Finance charged a per diem allowance of $1500.00Bz to himself from the credit card. We were unable to determine whether this was in connection with the same foreign travel to Chicago."

The auditor notes: "We also noted that the Director of Finance was allowed to make payments using the Credit Card without the CEO's approval. When asked why such action was entertained the Director of Finance stated that he was given that level of responsibility. Again, no documentation was provided to us to support such a claim."

In its official response to the Auditor, the KHMH Administration says that it never tried or intended to withhold information or documents from the auditors. The LHMH concludes that quote, "the auditors did not properly discuss the transactions with the Director of Financial Services before questioning the legitimacy of the transactions".

As for the listing the CEO's credit Card transactions - the KHMH statements bristles at that one saying the Auditor is just, quote "sensationalizing the issue."

The statement adds that the auditors listed 90 transactions and 60 of those were within CEO Longsworth's allowance - therefore needing no receipts."

As for the DFS charges, the statement adds that quote, "there were a couple personal transactions only on foreign travels charges that were cleared and properly billed to the Director of Finance…reflecting proper accountability and transparency. Yet the Auditor General presented the charge as an expense to the institution." We note that couple means two. The statement adds that the DFS made it clear that several personal items he acquired while travelling and attending official functions on behalf of the institution were properly accounted for and did not accrue as an expense to the institution. It adds that the charges of upgrades on travel are approved based on the travel budget allocated to the respective directors.

That's it for tonight's report on the audit, we'll have more on Monday.

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