Accountant who allegedly fabricated audit report appears on camera

The New Mexico State Auditor claims audited financial statements for the New Mexico Finance Authority were fabricated in their entirety. I mentioned this in my previous post, Faked audit report in New Mexico.

This has been the cause of an uproar in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, as you can imagine.  The local news station, KOB 4, found the controller allegedly behind the fiasco at his home on Friday. They spoke to him before the investigators did.  You can read KOB’s  report at NMFA Comptroller on bogus audit: Not malicious.

His explanation at the moment is that he prepared a draft report for the audit. This would be fine up to a point. The concept is that the client ought to prepare the financial information, including all necessary notes. Even the single audit schedules ought to be prepared by the auditee.

Somehow the draft report was submitted as the final report along including signed auditor’s reports.

KOB reports:

But when questioned by [KOB Investigative Producer Peter] St. Cyr as to why he didn’t correct officials telling them it was a draft, [Greg] Campbell responded stating that it was a “bad decision” on his part.

“I put those papers together with no malicious intent in terms of saying that the numbers were fraudulent or there’s some monies missing or things of that nature. None of that is the case,” Campbell said.

You can read a transcript of the full interview here.

If you’ve read this far in my post, you really will want to look at the video of the interview. Mr. Campbell obviously did not realize the mess he was in when he opened the door and answered questions.  He had not thought about his answers and seems he didn’t anticipate some of the questions. The video is at the top of the linked article above.

KOB reports that Mr. Campbell hasn’t yet retained an attorney. I hope he does so quickly.

If you are still reading, you really ought to check out goingconcern’s description.

Then check out a far more detailed report from New Mexico Watchdog:  NMFA’s Greg Campbell Makes His First Public Statements: Evasion, Contradictions and More Confusion. 

In that report Jim Scarantino analyzes the interview, points out some gaps in the replies, and asks several of the next questions that should be addressed.

The full audit is still available here.  Take a quick look and you will see what appears to be a complete set of financial statements.  Assets about $1.7 billion, bonds outstanding of about $1.2 billion, and revenue of about $140 million.

Hat tips to goingconcern.com and newmexico.watchdog.org.