Those who neglected to protect public funds during the multimillion-dollar Port Royal Golf Course restoration “must” be held to account, according to Auditor General Heather Jacobs Matthews.

The financing watchdog said the project, which ran up a bill of more than $24 million after initially being budgeted at $4.5 million, could be referred for further investigation by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The PAC move was announced in last Friday’s session of the House of Assembly, one week after MPs received Ms Jacobs Matthews’s highly critical report on a five-year revamp of the Southampton golf course.

In her report, completed last month, the Auditor General found extensive cost overruns, a lack of oversight and “total disregard” for the rules in place for government expenditure, including a lack of tendering and conflicts of interest with members of the Port Royal board of trustees.

One board member was a Government Minister at the time, she said.

“Should those persons responsible for the failure to safeguard the public purse be held accountable? The answer must be a resounding and unequivocal yes,” Ms Matthews told The Royal Gazette.

The PAC is mandated to assist Parliament within the framework of the report, to “hold the Government accountable for its spending of taxpayers’ money and for its stewardship over public assets — regardless of which body is spending it”, she said.

Port Royal’s refurbishment, from 2007 to 2011, was an ambitious project that included resurfacing the greens and putting down a new irrigation system.

A 2003 Department of Tourism report had found that Bermuda stood to lose out on golf tourism if the Island’s courses were not upgraded.

Port Royal, a government-owned course that opened for play in 1970, was singled out as needing “urgent” attention.

In her report, Ms Jacobs Matthews said responsibility for the project ought to have lain with the Ministry of Works and Engineering.

Instead, responsibility was delegated to the Cabinet Office from 2007 to 2010, and the Ministry of Tourism and Transport from 2010 to 2012, while Port Royal’s board of trustees managed the project.

None had the capacity for the oversight or management of such a project, Ms Jacobs Matthews said.

Nor did financial instructions permit the management of capital development projects to be delegated.

“These instructions unequivocally provided that the accounting responsibility for major capital development project rests with Works and Engineering,” her report read. “Government did not follow the law.”

The Auditor General’s office “did not undertake a forensic audit regarding the legality of payments relating to the project”, Ms Jacobs Matthews said yesterday.

“Our report concluded that neither the board of trustees nor the Government appropriately managed expenditures for the project, meaning that they failed to fulfil their oversight and management responsibility over public funds entrusted in their care,” she said.

“As a consequence, we were unable to determine if the funds received were used for the intended purpose or were fully accounted for due to the lack of accurate, complete and reliable financial information.”

Ms Jacobs Matthews’s report also mentioned the possibility of fraud or error going undetected.

Asked if she had referred any of its contents to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Auditor General said: “The PAC in its upcoming deliberations on the report and in their questioning of key witnesses — ie, board members, board management, permanent secretaries/accounting officers/other public officers — may determine that further examination is warranted. The PAC may also decide that the matter be referred to the authorities.”

She added: “It is also possible that additional information may come to my attention that may warrant further investigation.”

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