The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issues a favorable opinion with exceptions on the fiscal operations related to the Institutional Markets Program of the Administration for the Development of Agricultural Enterprises (ADEA).
The report further comments that a situation was referred to the consideration of the Executive Director of the Office of Government Ethics, regarding the possible ethical violations by a former ADEA official.
The audit reveals that ADEA did not carry out a bidding process or formalize contracts to comply with the food haulage services to the school cafeterias. From 2014 to 2016, ADEA disbursed $6.2 million to 63 independent haulers that did not have a contract, and to 40 of them, it paid in excess of the $40,000 limit that is the amount established by the Purchasing and Bidding Regulation. ADEA did not provide our auditors with evidence of the analysis they performed to establish the haulage payment rates, nor the consideration of the rates authorized for these services by the Public Service Commission.
The six-finding Report indicates multiple deficiencies in the purchase and sale of agricultural products of the Program. The Administrator, for example, had not updated the Program's Regulation to Reorganization Plan 4 of 2010, the fresh-meat buyer did not have the training or the appointment granted for that purpose by the General Services Administration, and the collection centers did not maintain perpetual inventories of the agricultural products purchased.
Contrary to the Accounting Manual, ADEA issued 268 checks for $2.5 million with the digitized signature of the Treasury Supervisor while she was on vacation or sick leave. The authorized and registered alternate signatures should have been used. In addition, the Administrator of ADEA had not designated an outside official to safeguard the blank checks; instead, the Treasury Supervisor performed this function, which is conflicting with her task of signing the checks.
The Report covers the period from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2016.
See Audit Report DA-18-08.
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