THE forensic audit into the operations of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) being conducted by the Auditor General, has been completed and is merely awaiting the final input of the M&CC before it is handed over to the Local Government Commission (LGC).

“The latest is that the Auditor General would have informed me that for all intents and purposes the audit has been completed and they are awaiting some responses from City Hall as it relates to some of the audit query…any time now we are expecting to receive the final report,” Chairman of the Local Government Commission, Mortimer Mingo, said on Tuesday on the Guyana Chronicle’s online programme, Vantage Point.

The audit was requested by the commission in keeping with a recommendation from the report from the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into City Hall operations conducted last year.
The audit commenced on March 18, 2019 and was to be conducted into the finances of City Hall for the period April 1, 2015 to October 31, 2018.

MONEY BAG INVESTIGATION

Meanwhile, the commission is expected to complete its investigation next week Thursday into a bag of cash belonging to the M&CC, which was found inside the vehicle assigned to Chief Constable, Andrew Foo, earlier in 2019. This newspaper was first made aware of the incident when Georgetown Mayor, Ubraj Narine, said that he was told that the money was being kept in the vehicle, PVV 1405, for quite some time.

Narine could not say how much money was in the bag or who reported the matter but he was disturbed that no one at the City Council told him about the incident. According to him, the bag found is one that contains a ‘lock’ or M&CC seal. It is for this reason that it could be confirmed that the money belongs to the council. It was after this confirmation that the City Council called on the commission to investigate the incident. On Tuesday, Mingo said that the investigation is near completion. “The investigation is all but concluded. The investigation was done and a number of officers were interviewed in keeping…with natural justice. Some of those officers were called before the commission to say why disciplinary action should not be taken against them as it relates to that incident,” Mingo said.

“We are hoping that by Thursday of next week we’ll be definitive in our conclusion in that matter to deal with those officers.”