Ex-Employee Set Up Employers?
John Avery
As has been reported, Flowers wrote what is called a “letter of representation” or “management letter” to the P.U.C. to query certain matters based on information given to him. Avery says that the final audit report indicates that several of the issues raised by Flowers, including the matter of credit card purchases, donations and the funding of the Raspberry Pi program, were detailed to his satisfaction. The P.U.C. does concede that its members must pay income taxes on salary and gratuity payments. As for statutory authority, Avery charges that the office of the Auditor General is responsible for P.U.C. audits but has not done one since the start of Avery’s tenure in 2008.
John Avery, Chair, Public Utilities Commission
“One of the documents that were being circulated was in fact an electronic copy of a letter sent to the P.U.C. by our auditor. It’s something that was called a management letter by some people; our auditor called it a letter of representation. In effect, when the audit for the P.U.C. is being conducted, people from our accounts section work with the auditor. They can only answer certain questions for the auditor up to a point; thereafter the auditor would usually write a letter to top management for explanations of certain things. And I would like to deal with some of the issues raised in that management letter – that thing was solely for the purpose of management; the auditor did not have all the required information to complete his audit and so he was asking questions. One thing I must point: when the final audit was sent to the P.U.C. – unfortunately I neglected to bring a copy of that letter – the auditor made it plain that those questions that were asked was as a result of representations made by a member of our staff. In other words, that persons made certain comments to him based on his knowledge, some in areas which he was not familiar with, and it was on that basis that the auditor wrote that letter. Another thing before I start; I would like to point out that these audits that the P.U.C. have retained our auditor to do are not required by law. Under the law, it is the Auditor General’s office that is supposed to audit the P.U.C. every single year. Unfortunately – and I can’t say why; it could be lack of resources, whatever – since the P.U.C. was established, the Auditor General’s office has only audited the PU.C. once. We voluntarily decided that that is something that we would like to sustain and so we hired an auditor to audit our accounts annually.”
