{"id":344143,"date":"2021-05-13T06:05:37","date_gmt":"2021-05-12T20:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=344143"},"modified":"2021-05-13T06:05:37","modified_gmt":"2021-05-12T20:05:37","slug":"nmti-737k-unaccounted-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/nmti-737k-unaccounted-for\/","title":{"rendered":"NMTI: $737K unaccounted for"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Rep. Leila Staffler (D-Saipan), first from left, joins the Northern Marianas Technical\u00a0Institute board of trustees and NMTI’s interim chief executive officer Jodina Attao, first from right, at its special board meeting yesterday at its facility in Lower Base. (JUSTINE NAUTA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Where\u2019s the money?\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a question raised by Northern Marianas Technical Institute chair Mario Valentino after finding out that only $13,000 of the $750,000 of the CNMI-Only Transitional Worker funds was transferred into the vocational institution\u2019s bank account.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the NMTI special board meeting via Zoom, Valentino questioned why the institute has nothing in its bank account when, in fact, they received the entire $750,000.<\/p>\n

It was learned that $13,000 out of $750,000 was spent for NMTI\u2019s payable, which leaves $737,000 unaccounted for. <\/p>\n

Also, it was learned that the transition committee that handled the transition of NMTI from a private nonprofit into a government agency didn\u2019t disclose in its transition report how the $750,000 in CNMI-Only Transitional Worker funds that NMTI got was spent.<\/p>\n

This is why Valentino is now pushing for an independent audit to be done to track down where the money went. <\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, when a company transfers over, there\u2019s a forensic scrub up. \u2026That\u2019s what we wanted this [audit] for, to exonerate people to make sure that it\u2019s there\u2026and if it\u2019s not there, we need to know why,\u201d said Valentino.<\/p>\n

Valentino said his attempt to get the records of prior audits have always been brushed off and was told by the people on the NMTI transition committee not to worry about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kept asking, \u2018Where\u2019s the records,\u2019 \u2018Where\u2019s all the stuff,\u2019 [and I was told], \u2018Don\u2019t worry about it, it\u2019s got nothing to do with you. We\u2019re just transferred everything.\u2019 [But] no, it was a sloppy transfer that\u2019s unacceptable. And here\u2019s where we\u2019re at now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Valentino said he did not get the transparency he was looking for from the transition committee when it came to the financial statements.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy was it a problem to even include this in the transition report? I waited two months, and I had to submit a report without that information,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Valentino said the audit report did \u201cmiraculously\u201d appear and was later turned in but there is still $737,000 that is unaccounted for.<\/p>\n

It was also learned from NMTI trustee Rick Kautz that the $750,000 in CNMI-Only Transitional Worker funds was only for fiscal year 2020, covering the period from Oct. 1, 2019, to September 2020. Since then, no money has been appropriated to NMTI.<\/p>\n

Kautz said he is going to reach out to Finance Secretary David Atalig, who chaired the transition finance committee, to get all the information he needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where\u2019s the money?\u201d This was a question raised by Northern Marianas Technical Institute chair Mario…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":344162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[479],"class_list":["post-344143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-nmti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}