NOTEBOOK: FCT audit report and the media

NOTEBOOK: FCT audit report and the media

I DISAGREE with some of Julito Longkines’s claims and assertions in his statement (see page 41) about the Philippine Reporter story on his audit findings on the Filipino Centre Toronto (FCT).
Longkines claims our reporter used the “draft 2003 audit report” in her story.

With all due respect to his competence and experience as an accountant, as shown by his rigorous and meticulous audit report, he must be referring to another audit report he had made. The audit report in the hands of our reporter has mentioned transactions and cheques dated 2004 and 2005. Please refer to page 24 where reporter Marilen de Guzman elaborates on this further.

It is easy to settle this question of fact once and for all. Longkines and our reporter should get together and compare the reports in their hands.

I am not familiar with the FCT’s procedures nor am I an accountant but I’ve taken enough accounting courses in Manila and Toronto to understand that an audit to be seriously competent must be done by a licensed accounting professional like Longkines. But to subject an audit report to the approval of a group of people who are not professional accountants will make its professional quality suffer. In fact, it ceases to be an audit report if its findings are tampered with or modified by non-accountants.
The FCT Board may reply to the audit report, it may disagree with the findings or with the recommendations but to “approve” it???

In fact, when Longkines was asked by our reporter whether his findings would be changed if his report is discussed by the board, he said no, they would not be changed.

Another issue I want to dispute is the claim that we published the draft of the 2003 report and put the FCT president and his husband “into a bad light, implying that they were reimbursed improperly.”
Our story’s main source is the audit report of Longkines entitled “Audit Findings” and the story mainly quoted his findings. If his findings put some people in a bad light, well because some impropriety is implied in his findings.

That we decided to publish some of the contents of his “draft” audit report is another issue. It is quite common that reports, public or private, draft or final, are leaked to the media. The media organization, if it finds that the contents of a report affect public interest, it may publish or broadcast the contents of the report, no matter whose interest gets compromised.

We believe public interest is involved even as the FCT is a private entity. It receives donations from the public and it undertakes fundraising events.

One underlying guideline for the media in this situation is fairness. We sought the reply of the FCT president who promised to fax or email the FCT board’s reply. We waited for days and until the wee hours of the morning which she promised she would even if it was 1:00 a.m. She never did.
Now her P.R.O. and two board members and Longkines himself have replied and we’re publishing all of them in this issue.

There is no question about it, this controversy will affect the FCT’s standing in the community. For all the good it has done for the community, despite its management’s abrasive image, the questions and issues raised in the audit report should be addressed in earnest. It will not do to dismiss everything as a smear campaign waged by disgruntled elements who did not help the FCT in its fundraising activities. The audit findings, if published in full, will show even a novice in accounting that some practices have to be explained and/or changed.

Some of the top leaders of the FCT board are long-standing personalities with unblemished records in the Filipino community. That is one reason why FCT has gained the support of many well-meaning leaders and groups. The fact that it has raised a substantial amount of funds from its activities is a proof of the credibility of its leaders.

But now that some questions have been raised, especially in the audit report of its own auditor, the FCT board should treat this as a test of its ability to serve the community further. It should conduct a thorough and credible probe and be transparent in the whole process. If some people’s functions have to be temporarily taken over by others, so be it. The most important thing now is to recover the trust of many people who have started to raise doubts. Public trust is the most important asset of a community group. It should do everything to gain, maintain and protect it. Without it, any group cannot continue to serve its constituents or its community.

We in the media support community groups if they are good in what they do. In the meantime, allow us to do what we believe we’re good at doing.