Portland Hotel Society Audit

Surprised there's no thread from the mechanic on this news from last week .

Some of the questionable expenses include:

• $678.23 for a limousine trip for 11 individuals from Fairmont Pacific Rim to Grouse Mountain and then to a PHS director’s house.
• $8,657.96 in limousine charges by an executive director in 2013.
• $8,323.22 on travel to the U.K. to look into heroin prescription programs and for other business purposes, including a hotel room costing £478 ($887) per night and a £35 ($65) charge for flowers.
• $5,850.20 on travel to Austria to teach harm reduction practices including one night in a luxury king-size room at $549 per night.
• $3,175.12 on travel to Bristol for business purposes, including one £288 ($535)-per-night room and one £420 ($780)-per-night room, and charges relating to alcohol and spa services and £25 ($46) on flowers.
• $1,636.51 at a restaurant for a staff appreciation event.
• $2,694.95 for the Disney Resort Grand Anaheim for two adults and two children, including a room upgraded to accommodate a director in poor health.
• $5,950 on Transat Holidays. No receipt or documentation was provided for this transaction.
• $8,900 spent on a minibus and driver in the United Kingdom.
• $917.83 for a staff baby shower.
• $1,807.68 for a staff Christmas dinner.
• $7,024.72 for a celebration of life for a deceased employee.
• $1,600 in monthly expenses charged to PHS by the executive directors for use of office space within the residence they share. In addition, improvement expenses such as cabinets were also charged to PHS.
• $5,832 reimbursed for the purchase of a Danube cruise made on what appears to be a personal credit card of a PHS director

Terrible misuse of public funds without any consequences for the PHS management. No criminal charges and they even get 8 weeks severance!

The situation has put into question the government's system of contracting out taxpayer-funded social projects.

VCH Internal Audit: http://www.vch.ca/media/Portland-Hotel-Society-Audit-Report_VCH.pdf

BC Housing Financial Review by KPMG
Forensic: http://www.bchousing.org/resources/Media_Centre/PHS/PHS_Financial_Review.pdf

 

Why such opulence? They could and should have booked much cheaper hotels. Moral short- comings there. there needs to be tighter regulations on spending expenses. This is what happens when there are no shareholders to be accountable to.

 

... hi milquetoast. thanks for posting and thanks for mentioning me in your post ...

... the reason i didn't mention this story is because it's just propaganda being used by the government-controlled scab news media to aggravate people. thus i try to ignore this stuff. and is it really that newsworthy anyway?

... i mean, the government is telling us that it's using phony "charities" as fronts to loot the tax dollars they extort from taxpayers throughout the province. big frickin' deal!!! we already know the liberals are nothing more than a horde of corrupt crooks. and i've dealt with auditors before, pricewaterhousecoopers to be exact, and i know that they're just as corrupt as the government they represent. so who audits the auditors? it's all just news media warfare and should be ignored!

 

That is simply too much. Anyone resigning?

 

The Province says they were offered severance pay- outs to quit. I guess you can only fire regular people at low paying retail jobs these days.

 

... there's a word for this type of criminal activity the liberal government is so brazenly shoving in our face -- money laundering! as i said above, this scheme shows that the bc government is using phony "charity" scams to loot and launder stolen cash into many different pockets ...

... but there's more to it than that!

... have you noticed how the only politician being held to account for this is an ndp mla? the only reason the news media is pimping this story is because it hurts the ndp. this story is nothing more than anti-ndp liberal government propaganda and should be ignored ...