A former senior accounts manager at Te Rōpū Taurima, Annie Du says she made a monitor from the Ministry of Health aware of her concerns back in February 2013.
That person, Malcolm Robson was subsequently appointed CEO at the trust in July 2013. Native Affairs asked Mr Robson for an interview this evening but he declined. However in a statement sent to Native Affairs late this afternoon Mr Robson says.
“The trust is in a difficult position because it's not able to respond to the issues raised by former employees, which relate to a number of different investigations by various government authorities and the independent forensic audit, the latter of which is expected to take a number of months to be completed by PWC.”
"What we can say is that the trust board and management are working hard on all of the investigations and audits, and with the support of advisers and the relevant authorities we intend to reach a timely conclusion of these processes."
“We were investigating potential mistakes in spending long before the period the former employees refer to. We fully accept that we may have missed things, and this is why we are pursuing these investigations and the audit.”
“We are doing this thoroughly, and are not going to jeopardize the processes by getting into public debate.”
“We can assure everyone concerned that we will be absolutely open about what is found, in order to restore full confidence in the trust and its operations."