OPA urged to re-investigate ‘unresolved’ issues at NMC

Public Auditor Mike Pai is being urged by Taotao Tano Inc. president Gregorio Cruz to re-open a probe on “unresolved” issues at the Northern Marianas College, including unaccounted and missing funds that date back to the administration of former president Agnes McPhetres.

“We strongly believe that there are still unresolved questionable financial mismanagement uncovered by the former public auditor [Leo Lamotte] during early audits and oversight hearings held back then by the Legislature on such serious issues with the NMC,” Cruz told Pai in a letter yesterday.

He mentioned that these instances occurred during the tenure of McPhetres as the institution’s president and were “covered up for a long time.”

“We firmly believe and hope that your office reconsider re-auditing and investigating such improprieties as missing financial statements and mismanagement of NMC during Mrs. Agnes McPhetres’ tenure as president. This had been an issue that had long been covered up and, without OPA stepping in on the matter, [this] undermines the agency’s integrity of being the investigative arm of all government and autonomous agencies in the Commonwealth,” Cruz said.

To date, for example, Cruz said they are still unsure whether the $82,000 embezzlement scheme on student scholarships was ever paid back to NMC by concerned individuals.

Cruz, citing documents about past NMC “issues,” wants an update on the OPA findings about discrepancies in the college since 1992; the unaccounted federal funds; and discrepancies in the college’s collections.

“If Judge Govendo can send two lawyers to jail for not accounting for all their expenditures, so can NMC,” Cruz added .

He also cited the case of Lt. Gov. Timothy Villagomez, saying “If the lieutenant governor is under federal indictment from case files dating 10 to 15 years ago, so can NMC.”

Pai confirmed receiving Cruz’s request and said he has talked with the Taotao Tano president over the phone.

However, he said the request may not happen immediately, pending the hiring of additional manpower for audit works and request. OPA is in the process of hiring 11 individuals, majority of whom will be assigned to auditing work. As of yesterday, Pai said the list of applicants have yet to be seen by his office.

“An audit or re-investigation at NMC? Yes. However, we lack the manpower but once we hire the proper number of staff we will do it,” he told Saipan Tribune.

Pai classified as “small audit projects” the past work conducted by OPA for NMC.

“NMC is a big entity and we need more staff. All agencies would like to be audited and we cannot audit them all at the same time. That’s why we’re working on a priority at present,” he added.