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Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) had the doc­u­ments to ver­i­fy mil­lions spent on over­seas trav­el, but a sim­ple ad­min­is­tra­tive fail­ure meant those records were nev­er sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s 2024 re­port flagged $6.8 mil­lion in over­seas trav­el pay­ments by the THA that could not be ver­i­fied be­cause doc­u­men­ta­tion was not pro­vid­ed. The re­port said the trans­ac­tions were processed us­ing the Au­to­mat­ed Clear­ing House (ACH), but with­out sup­port­ing records, au­di­tors were un­able to con­firm who trav­elled, where, and at what cost.

Au­gus­tine, in his re­sponse to the find­ings, said the doc­u­ments do ex­ist, how­ev­er, he will still in­ves­ti­gate some ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.