The Cayman Track Limited, a governmental authority that runs the horseracing tracks in Jamaica, has come under the radar for its improper accounting practices. An audit was commissioned by the Ministry of Finance to look into the reasoning behind the entity getting into a financial mess.
The audit found that the payables accounting is highly flawed. There is lack of required documentation for payments to be made; which is a direct contravention of the Financial Administration and Audit (FAA) (Instructions) Act. The law states that “each payment of public money must be supported by a payment voucher or a claim which incorporates the details required for a payment voucher”. CTL allegedly breached the law as the name and address of payee were not available or documented on the payment voucher or on any supporting document attached. Several payment vouchers did not include information regarding the work performed, services rendered or details of goods received.
When payments are made CTL is required to rubber stamp the bills/invoices and supporting documents as “paid” and an authorized official should certify it, but there were multiple payment documents that were found without the stamp. This could easily lead to multiple payments to vendors or worse lead to misappropriations of funds.
CTL is also charged of not following the FAA Act on another issue. The inventories or stores ledgers recording the cost and dates of acquisition of all public property must be properly maintained to support the write-off of any losses or deficiencies, which the company failed to do. A case in point was that a generator was stolen in 2009-2010 but there was no documentation of the generator on the fixed asset register. This is again something that could lead to misuse of the assets of the company. If the asset is not on the books it could very easily be sitting at an employee’s house!
