There were clear breaches of USP policies and processes that implicate the former members of the administration - President Aingimea

The President of Nauru and former Chancellor of the University of the South Pacific, Lionel Aingimea has told the parliament of Nauru that there were clear breaches of USP policies and processes that implicate the former senior staff, and in the course of 2019 and 2020, USP’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia uncovered numerous other violations of USP policies and procedures.

Aingimea says Ahluwalia submitted an issues paper to the Executive Committee in March 2019 where individuals working at USP were named and circumstances highlighted that were considered worthy of investigation.

According to the BDO report, those allegations primarily related to human resource and remuneration decisions that were made by the former Vice Chancellor and the senior management team of the USP.

It said in it’s introduction, objective and scope that the paper put forward 26 allegations of mismanagement by the former Vice Chancellor of the USP. BDO says to a lesser extent, the paper implicated other members of the USP’s senior management team as either beneficiaries, or decision makers.

BDO stated that it is of the view that oversight, governance and control of remuneration was a key weakness across the USP.

Aingimea says the BDO investigation remarked that they did not see commercial logic in a number of decisions but also pointed out that for the previous administration, this was nothing short of a “gravy train”.

He says according to the BDO report, they also did not understand why USP’s former VC was getting in the payroll affairs of a mid-level staff member.

Aingimea further told the Nauru parliament that the BDO report was used as a basis for the USP Council appointed Commission to review USP procedures, and to implement reforms so the mismanagement, corruption, fraud and financial irregularities should not be repeated.

He says the losses reflected in the BDO report run into millions of taxpayers and government’s grant dollars.

Aingimea says going forward, he will be urging the USP Council to develop strategies to ensure that the University remains financially sustainable.

He then said the USP as a regional university does not belong to any one country and responsibilities of the institution are borne by its members.

Aingimea says there is an ongoing contention of Fiji withholding its grant agreement due to the USP Council’s decision.

He says this move is seen as a divisive and a dismissal move against regionalism considering that all Pacific Island Country members of USP voted overwhelmingly to support the offering of a new contract to Ahluwalia.

Nauru’s President says USP needs every contributing member to give its contribution.

Meanwhile, Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum in the August sitting of parliament had stressed that Fiji does not accept Professor Pal Ahluwalia as the Vice Chancellor of the USP, and will not release any grants to the USP until proper processes are followed to appoint a new VC and an independent investigation is carried out against Ahluwalia.

He had stated with the Vice Chancellor’s Office located in Samoa, it should now be the responsibility of the Samoan Government to host the office.

Sayed-Khaiyum had further said a KPMG Report has found 7 instances where he alleges Ahluwalia had seriously breached the authority of the Vice Chancellor.

The Attorney General made allegations of mismanagement, nepotism, cronyism and fraud against Ahluwalia in parliament.

He also raised questions on a number of appointments of certain individuals and says they were allegedly done in breach of processes.