The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issues a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the State Elections Commission. A qualified opinion is issued when the instances of noncompliance, individually or in the aggregate, are significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that the officials who acted as secretaries had not prepared 111 minutes -73%- of the 152 meetings the Commission held during the audited period. The secretary has the duty to take notes, draft, prepare the acts or minutes of the meetings and certify them. This situation, contrary to the Electoral Act, may lead to the legality and validity of the actions being challenged when the minutes are not presented at subsequent meetings for approval.
The six-finding audit notes that the provision to prepare and submit the single audits to the United States Election Assistance Commission, which had disbursed $3.2 million in federal funds from 2014 to 2017, was not complied with. The services of certified public accountants to prepare the 2016 financial statements were contracted 70 days after the deadline and as of February 20, 2018, the single audit for fiscal year 2016 had still not been completed or submitted.
Our auditors identified that as of June 30, 2017, the internal auditor position had been vacant for six months and an Internal Audit Committee had not been appointed. This deficiency may affect the independence, integrity, reliability and transparency of its processes. A similar situation had already been commented on in Audit Report DA-10-10 of 2009.
In 2016 a physical inventory was not conducted, as provided by the regulations in force, of the 17,937 units of property acquired at a cost of $17.7 million. In addition, the materials and supplies warehouse lacked internal controls since for 2014, 2016 and 2017 the warehouse keeper III did not conduct physical inventories at least twice a year as provided by the Procedures Manual. Audit Report DA-10-21 of 2010 comments on a similar situation.
The Report detected that the special paying officer, who reports to the Finance Chief, performed conflicting functions since she recorded the fund requests in the accounting system, took steps to locate beneficiaries of returned checks while also cancelling expired checks. This situation, contrary to the Act 230 of Accounting of Puerto Rico, creates an environment for errors and irregularities to be committed.
The Report covers the period from January 1, 2014 to June 30, 2017.
See Audit Report DA-19-01.
To view other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
Some documents on this page are saved in PDF format.
To view these documents, you must have the following free program installed.
