CitCo’s Financial Records Under the P.U.P. Microscope

This morning, the P.U.P. held a press briefing to draw public scrutiny to what they say is very questionable management of the City Council’s finances over the past three years of Mayor Darrell Bradley’s administration. P.U.P. mayoral aspirant, Yolanda Schakron, had centre stage, backed up by former P.U.P. Mayor and Minister, Joe Coye, who by profession is also an accountant. To support their assertions, the P.U.P. is looking at CitCo’s financial records for three years – 2012, 2013 and 2014. Schakron broke it down in a very simplified nutshell to get the show underway.

Yolanda Schakron

Yolanda Schakron, P.U.P. Mayoral Candidate, Belize City

“The audit for 2012 by Castillo, Sanchez and Burrell, Chartered Accountants, had an adverse opinion. Basically what that means is that they didn’t have enough evidence to say what the real position of the Council is. The numbers reportedly could simply not be independently verified as being correct. The second audit for 2013 was done by the same auditors, but it was apparently so bad that no opinion could be provided by the auditors. There are therefore no audited financial statements for 2013. And now let us go to the third audit, the 2014 audit. It was done by a new auditor, namely PKF – Pannell, Kerr, Foster. In its opinion PKF confirmed that the 2013 audit did not have an opinion on them, so yes…the value of the 2014 audit is without…it has lots of questions, it is not valuable. Clearly the 2012 audit had an adverse opinion, the 2013 auditors could not provide an opinion…how then can the 2014 audit be taken credi9bly given that the basis from which it starts is not able to be verified? If opening balances cannot be verified, how can the closing balances possibly be verified as being correct?”