A request for proposal has now gone out for an audit to be done of past spending at the Thompson-Nicola Regional District.
The RFP release comes eight days after board members voted to allow an independent, forensic audit to go ahead into spending between 2015 and 2020 within the regional district.
The regional district says the company that applies for and wins the bid will be chosen based on a scored process.
TNRD chief administrative officer Scott Hildebrand and director of legislative services Deanna Campbell will jointly oversee the RFP process, before a third party is chosen to do the audit. Both Hildebrand and Campbell started working at the regional district last summer.
“The review will not be limited in scope and will include a thorough review of all management and board of director expenses and expense reporting, examination of past accounting and financial controls, contracting and purchasing practices and a review of current policies and processes, with the goal of making recommendations and identifying areas for improvement,” a news release from the TNRD says.
Companies have until 4 p.m. on April 12 to a submit a proposal to do the audit, on the BC Bid website. After a company is chosen, the exact timeline of the audit is not clear, but Hildebrand has said it will happen as soon as possible. The cost for it is estimated to be at least $50,000.
The audit has been called after a spending controversy at the TNRD was uncovered by a year-long investigation by Kamloops This Week. The report that came out last month showed more than $517,000 of taxpayer money had been spent on the credit card of former CAO Sukh Gill in his final five years in power. Gill suddenly left the TNRD in February of 2020, with a payout worth more than $520,000 and a legal agreement for it to be called a retirement by his former employer.
Reporting by KTW showed of the $517,000 spent on Gill’s credit card since 2015, much was spent at luxury hotels, fine restaurants, coffee shops, golf courses and other high-end discretionary locations, for himself and other TNRD directors and staff.
Gill has not returned repeated phone calls and voicemails in the past month from NL News.
The audit that will be done will cover between 2015 and 2020, but Hildebrand has said it could go back further.