St. Elizabeth MC – Unsupported $472.5M Expenditure and $236.4M Revenue; Outstanding 2023/2024 Financial Statement

Auditor General's Findings

The 2023/2024 Auditor General’s Annual Report (subsection 3.2.271) found that the audit of the 2013/2014 financial statements revealed material discrepancies between the draft financial statements submitted for audit and the St. Elizabeth Municpal Corporation’s underlying records. Management consequently resubmitted a revised set of financial statements and an updated general ledger. However, the Corporation failed to provide the relevant journal vouchers to support the changes in its revised financial statements. While some records were provided during the audit, the Auditor General Department (AuGD) was unable to determine whether several amounts were fairly presented, as management did not supply sufficient appropriate evidence to support all the relevant transactions and balances selected for testing. These amounts included:

• expenditure totalling $472,515,761;
• revenue totalling $236,445,214;
• assets totalling $43,360,997;
• bank overdraft totalling $32,020,269;
• other liabilities totalling $80,947,722;
• a revenue and expenditure adjustment totalling $9,374,944;
• and reserves totalling $64,394,190

The Corporation also failed to submit its 2023/2024 financial statements as required by the Local Government (Financing and Financial Management) Act; the corporation also did provide a response to the AuGD.