Wintec says it plans urgent action over spending concerns
Wintec is taking urgent action to address serious concerns that money it has spent — particularly on overseas trips — cannot be accounted for.
The Waikato-based tertiary institute yesterday released the findings of an Audit NZ investigation into travel expenses made by past and present management, redundancy and severance payments.
Audit NZ, in its report, was unable to provide assurance that all overseas expenditure was appropriate and or had not been spent on personal use.
“This is unacceptable for a public entity charged with the stewardship of public resources,” the report said.
“We are particularly concerned about the processes, patterns of behaviour, and level of documentation we saw in our work on international travel expenditure. Some of these practices simply do not meet accepted standards of public sector behaviour and provide an increased opportunity for the misuse of public money.”
The lack of documentation also meant Audit NZ did not have a complete account of how much the chief executive and his management team spent in Hong Kong and China.
Wintec chief executive Barry Harris said Audit NZ could not produce any evidence of any wrongdoing or misappropriation.
“There’s no evidence there’s money missing. If there was I would pursue that,” he said.
Meanwhile, the independent investigation by Auckland-based QC Simon Mount into historic allegations into former chief executive Mark Flowers’ actions was unable to substantiate the majority of complaints “on the balance of probability”.
Flowers was also criticised for how he handled a conflict of interest in relation to an employee.
“A consistent theme from many I interviewed was that Wintec did not always strike the right the balance between flexibility and due process . . . It also contributed to a perception among many of the staff I interviewed that the chief executive could direct employment outcomes without following proper process,” Mount said.
Harris said Wintec would now review its processes and policies to make sure they were robust.
In a statement Flowers said he was pleased but not surprised he had been cleared of any wrongdoing.
He said Wintec was audited for each of the 16 years he was chief executive and there had never been any issue raised about inappropriate or unauthorised spending by him.
The reports cost Wintec a total of $282,000. A further $30,000 was spent on an investigation by Wellington-based lawyer Victoria Casey, QC, who looked at whether the original report clearing Flowers of any wrongdoing was robust.
Flowers has been on sick leave since August last year and officially retires from Wintec next month.