Spreadsheet shows unusual start to financial year

Questions over Housing NZ Corporation's accounting practices start with a spreadsheet which shows a highly unusual beginning to the financial year for a public body.

A spreadsheet for capital expenditure shows the amount of money spent by the corporation to acquire or upgrade physical assets - such as buildings - in its modernisation programme.

Figures for the first year of the 2005/06 financial year raise questions over money spent and money which has not been spent.

Government departments start each year with a clean slate, yet the accounts appear to show $720,210 not spent the previous year may have been carried forward for spending in a new financial year.

It is expected that taxpayer money which has not been spent is returned to the coffers for fresh distribution.

The spreadsheets also appear to show money which might have been spent in previous financial years might have been carried forward into a new year.

If so, this money should have been tallied against the budget in the previous annual report.

One of the figures is for $2.1 million - the amount of money the whistleblower alleges was placed in a "suspense account" and carried forward to hide blown budgets.

The spreadsheet shows $2.1m appearing as money spent on modernisation in west and north Auckland in July. It is set against a budget of $119,840, and shows on the accounts as the budget for the first month of the year blown by 1670 per cent.

-HERALD ON SUNDAY