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Originally Posted by Slava
Any evidence of the fraud? I can see the accounting issues, but honestly that doesn't mean its fraudulent, that means it wasn't recorded properly and paperwork wasn't kept.
I know that the easy red-flag is that her lover is the manager...but he was agreed upon between the band and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (which has a different name that I can't recall).
The more I think about it, the more I think that the audit was going to fail from the start. On a reserve with housing issues, water issues and all kinds of terrible conditions it was probably known that proper records weren't being kept. The government and the Dept. of Indian Affairs was at least complicit here.
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75% of missing documents and anonymous payments doesn't stike me as accounting ignorance, its becoming more and more clear that the money that was ear marked to things like housing and heath care and education went to anonymous real estate deals and indivual accounting fees.
Like I mentioned before, when the Enron's and other companies of the world were doing wacky accounting the first thing that we spouted was deliberate fraud and criminal activites, and not to pick on you Slava, but in a similar situation your saying poor record keeping and accounting issues.
The bottom line to me is that funding that reservation wasn't the issue, the issue is the money never trickled below the band leader and council to where it was suppossed to go, now whether the money was kicked back to Spence and her boyfriend, or to other council members or to friends and family, we'll never know unless the RCMP goes in and starts investigating which I think has to happen now.
But are we gving her a break because she's an Indian and a her reservation a focal point for the poor and downtrodden set?
You're right the Federal Government is part of the problem here, however if you remember when the Feds released emergency funds to deal with the housing crisis they also sent in a outside administrator to get the books in order, and Spence pretty much threw him out before he could dig into the books, so the government tried to bring accountabilty to the band council, and Spence basically screamed sovereign right and handed the books back over to her boyfriend. What's the government to do what's their role, when can they take over the books? If anything in mind Harper should have been far tougher on Spence and her Cabal, but then the NDP and the Libs and FA would have probably played the racism card "Harper hates Indians and wants to re-invent the Indian Wars"
Its not that your post makes me angry or anything Slava, but we're talking 500 transactions audited out of thousands, so if 400 or so were missing document and money vanishing into unseen hands out of the 500 I'm betting a complete audit would be far more horrifying.
At this point I can't honestly sit back and say accounting mistakes and forgetting to staple documents, that can't be accepted as an excuse unless you and the government are silling to state that due to a lack of education the government will start running the books for the entire first nation and screw self-government.
Spence is the worst kind of parasite. She had to have seen her people freezing and instead of actually taking care of them she instead went to a political solution to cover her own a$$.
It would have played chicken with her on her miracle non weigh loss diet and countering with, I won't meet you until we can do a complete audit of your books.