Disaster Reconstruction Authority (DRA) Executive Chairman Alex Storr said yesterday that the long-overdue 2020 and 2021 audited financials have been taking longer than anticipated because of poor record-keeping during that period.

Storr said the cost of the audited 2020 financials is significantly over budget as a result.

“They have been hampered by poor record-keeping and totally improper accounting practices and the accountants found that they had to do a lot of work that should have been done in-house to make sure that they were presented with proper figures,” he said in an interview with The Nassau Guardian.

“So, the audit is severely over budget as well because of the extra work the auditors had to do, but the first audit should be completed shortly as well, so that we can submit that.”

He added, “The price for the original audit was $30,000 and I would tell you that we are maybe more than five times over that amount.”

Storr clarified that the amount applied only to the 2020 audited financials and does not take into account the cost of the 2021 audited financials.

While the law mandates that the DRA provide audited accounts within three months after the end of each financial year, no audited accounts of the DRA have been tabled since its inception in December 2019.

Section 11(3) of the Disaster Reconstruction Authority Act states that three months after the end of each financial year, the authority shall submit to the minister a copy of its audited accounts, together with a copy of any report made by the auditor.

As it relates to the unaudited 2020 financial statements, which were tabled in the House of Assembly in March 2021, Storr said they were “inaccurate”.

“Based on what the auditors are finding out, I would say that they are far from accurate,” he said.

Following his claims that the DRA was improperly managed under the Minnis administration, in February, Storr said a forensic audit would be conducted into the operations of the agency.

Asked yesterday about a timeline on when the audit will be completed, Storr said he could not say for certain.

“The audit is still ongoing,” he said.

“We spoke with the auditors just a few days ago to get an update and they are coming along.

“It’s just the problem is that as they ran into some issues, they decided to take a deeper dive into them or more information came up and they looked after other things.

“And so, it caused a few delays, but it’s just because they are trying to be as thorough as possible.”

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