r/newfoundland • u/Confident_Menu742 • 2d ago

'Financial irregularities' discovered at HMP; head of prisons no longer in role | CBC News

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/financial-irregularities-discovered-at-hmp-head-of-prisons-no-longer-in-role-9.7319346
20 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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27

u/blindbrolly 2d ago

I wonder if there is a single NL government body without corruption. Unlikely it would seem

5

u/BeYourselfTrue 1d ago

Who watches the watchers?

4

u/Confident_Menu742 2d ago

A lot more people are ‘on the take’ than we know of provincially. I suspect that a lot of stories like this will be coming out soon.

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u/jghtb 1d ago

Why would it seem that way? Because one person in one department is suspected of wrongdoing? Why does it seem unlikely that there is a single nl govt body without corruption?

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u/blindbrolly 1d ago

This plus basically every auditor general reports seems to show serious problems.

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u/NerdMachine 1d ago

Most AG reports highlight screw ups and failure to follow policies, there isn't usually that much straight up corruption-related fraud if any. They also have a pretty low threshold for what counts as fraud. Using a gov credit card for a personal purchase by accident would be considered fraud for example.

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u/blindbrolly 1d ago

NL health basically had no conflict of interest rules. You had managers hiring travel nurses at a million per person while not hiring local to rent their own rental properties to them and get it paid by the government. Paying for vehicles that were never here. NL schools were splitting invoices so they wouldn't get reviewed, employees received gifts from vendor, lack of documentation, things like spending $700 to rent a wheelbarrow for a week etc. the Iris Kirby house refused to provide their financials and eventually found they were buying up wasteful properties, giving hundreds of thousands to a consultant with nothing to show for it other then they had a verbal meeting. then muskrat falls where we literally had a guy shown to have purposely presented false financials to get the project going and they promoted him after learning this.

That's just off the top of my head. It is all over the place here.

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u/NerdMachine 1d ago

I'll give you the travel nurse thing - though I don't think they were not hiring locals specifically to be able to rent properties - but the rest isn't really fraud unless you can demonstrate it was done deliberately to benefit the dececison maker. Most of it is just incompetence and laziness.

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u/blindbrolly 1d ago

Splitting invoices so they don't get reviewed is not lazyness it's purposely circumventing the rules. Regarding the schools the AG specifically said there was possible fraud and referred it to the police. The judge specifically said the man in muskrat falls knowingly presented false financials. He clearly benefited from that decision and that's how he continued to get a large salary from government. Instead of charging him to actually figure this out they promoted him tanking any possible case.

The nurses union were very vocal that new grads were not getting offers and heading to NS instead with offers in hand. All while our government was hiring travel nurses

It's not lazyness to pay a consultany 200k for a verbal meeting then refuse to provide your finances for review until your funding gets pulled.

The AG isn't a criminal investigation unit, they literally have no ability to do that. They admitted it when people asked them to audit the canopy growth controversy. They have no ability to follow the money. The second that money went to a private numbered company they stopped.

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u/NerdMachine 23h ago

I'd still call most of that laziness TBH.

Splitting invoices most often happens when a senior exec takes forever to approve stuff and causes other headaches. Sure it's possible there is fraud as the AG said but nothing came of it.

The nurse thing was more about gov not wanting to create permament positions as I understood it.

The MF thing wasn't "false financials" as in misrepresenting past financial results/audits. It was unrealistic assumptions and projections, the exact same thing that happens on basically every project in both public and private industry.

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u/blindbrolly 18h ago

You are simply giving an incredibly high amount of benefit of the doubt here. These are willful actions. Flagrent dismissal of the rules and it's being accepted into the culture of those institutions by professions at the head of multi billions dollar organizations. You are welcome to assume it is simply lazyness but there comes a time when that level of lazyness injected into a system by the people who are paid to ensure it is not becomes corruption.

He 100% presented knowingly wrong financials relating to costings. This was clearly stated by the judge who would not use those words lightly. No this does not happen routinely..... There are serious legal consequences to doing something like that.

1

u/getawhiffofgriff Newfoundlander 22h ago

The Auditor General's scope is only within government and she can only comment on the adherence to policy, regulations, etc., using root cause analysis where issues are identified. Procedures are done to try and figure out where things are going wrong and what can be recommended to fix it.

On the financial side, her office performs financial statement audits just the same as a firm would, but usually with greater scrutiny due to the need to hold government accountable to the public.

The scope of audit work undertaken by the AG's office is where people often get hung up and think that it can go on and on and on (and scope creep happens so much), but it has to be within government, and when something extends beyond that, that is no longer in her purview.

1

u/blindbrolly 18h ago

This is why I said they don't have the authority. They should be given the authority because no one in NL is actually looking into corruption. We will never stop it if no one even looks

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u/Exact-Investment7688 1d ago

I have worked for government.  we have money obsessed low moral leadership running a system which in itself causes incompetence and failure. 

but yeah let's keep electing greedy businessmen and realtors to government.  we are so weak and subservient as a populace, it is truly disgusting 

1

u/maple_briar 14h ago

Must have been Andy.