THE 600K EMBASSY FIX: AUDITOR GENERAL’S REPORT USELESS

The Auditor General Terence Bastian was a busy man it seems over the past months. He had nothing better to do with his time than to go ferreting into why the expenses of the Brussels Embassy under the dead and gone Hubert Minnis were so extravagant.  There was the exposure by Keith Bell, the Minister of Immigration, that told us that 19,000 dollars was spent buying one rug.  Well we’ll damned. Anyhow, the Auditor General went with his intrepid team to looking to the matter. They didn’t find much expect that the total bill  was 600,000 dollars. The public was outraged.  Michael Pintard must have known what was coming because he got up on his high horse in the Assembly on Wednesday 19 October 2022 to denounce the travel budget and expenditure of the PLP.  This is surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black.  Mr. Pintard sat in the cabinet and allowed the 600,000 dollar expenditure to go unchallenged and now wants to preach about travel expense under the PLP.  The same man who sat in the Minnis Cabinet and agreed to raise in the middle of an economic emergency the per diem to 250 dollars per day for ministers to travel and for their wives. The PLP reduced it back to 150. The press wanted to know what the PLP was going to do about the recommendations pf the Auditor General, tabled in the House on Wednesday 19 October 2022. Well from what we can see, there is nothing to do. For example, one recommendation is that the Ministry put in place procedures for the  furnishing of the Ministry’s premises.  The problem is there are procedures and it was followed in the case of Hubert Minnis and his special friend in Brussels. The Prime Minister Minnis authorized the expenditure.  It was taken out of the British Embassy of The Bahamas’ funds and sent to Brussels with the approval of the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Hubert Minnis.  So far as we can tell, the report was useless.