FOUR U.S. inspectors general have offered to review the CNMI government’s expenditure of American Rescue Plan Act and other federal funds, Gov. Arnold I. Palacios said on Monday.
He said while he was in Washington, D.C. recently to attend a U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources hearing, four inspectors general of federal departments approached him and offered to look into the CNMI’s expenditures of ARPA monies and other federal funds received by the previous administration.
The governor said he asked them “to please take a look…and provide us with assistance in terms of financial management systems, auditing and putting our financial house in order.”
He noted that the information gathered during the CNMI House hearings on the ARPA-funded Building Optimism, Opportunity and Stability Together or BOOST program was also submitted to federal agencies.
The CNMI House recommended “the engagement” of the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of the Public Auditor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Office of the Inspector General and other federal authorities, “for further investigation of alleged waste, fraud or abuse of public funds, misconduct, and other violations of law.”
Palacios said his administration will also request funding from the U.S. Department of the Interior to conduct forensic audits on ARPA funds, the community disaster loans, and all the federal monies that have been provided to the Commonwealth in the last five to six years.
He said those audits will take time, so “we don’t want to be accusatory of something that’s not accurate.”
He added that his administration will soon have “finalized numbers pertaining to the previous administration’s spending of ARPA monies.”
“It’s not good,” he said, referring to the numbers so far.
According to the governor, the Department Finance is having difficulties with reconciling data because the government is also transitioning into a new financial management system.
“That’s only one of the challenges,” he added. “There are also a lot of records that are really difficult to get into, and so Finance is having quite a challenge to get those things done, but I gave them a deadline of this week.”
Palacios added, “I just need to get to the bottom of it — get me the numbers so that we can work on them and move forward.”
He reiterates that he doesn’t want to “go out with numbers that are not accurate.”
These issues, moreover, are now with the AG’s office, “and I’ll leave it at that because they are the law enforcement agency,” the governor said.
