A surprising lack of imagination there Matt if you are asking "how can it be so hard".
What if your CFO left tomorrow, and it took 3 months to get someone else in post? What if the successor decided to start using some new accounting package? What if they then left after 6 months? What if someone outside the organisation started asking for reports on things you weren't previously tracking, like "what if we categorised this expenditure as X rather than y?"
Not to defend the BMC here as obviously they should be on top of their accounts and be exercising appropriate financial control, but it's not hard to see how an org can get itself in to an accounting mess.
Because any irregularities should have been spotted within weeks, if the Directors and CEO have their eyes on the ball, even if it’s just an hour a week. Frankly, our CFO works under the directors (which I admit is unusual) and only came into post a year ago, anyway. The group ran for 40 years without, but grew to a point where it became justified. Any changes would need to be agreed by us and the boss (that is all the directors of all the companies in the group, around nine of us, I have only met five of them and then socially, we don’t even have board meetings). My boss is the most humble Billionaire I’ve met, works hard and is damn sharp, but hardly superhuman. Shows up at 12 midday and buggers off at 6 and yet has all his ducks in a row. I’ve known him for 24 years now. No, every director has an up to date financial report for their bailiwick every week. We’d need to lose the entire accounting division before that point and everything would pretty much grind to a halt anyway. Losing the CEO, is a different matter. Nothing over 10k could move without him and that includes payroll… However, he’s training up two of his nephews (one of which is my CD. He has no kids himself). By training up, I mean has been using them as proxies. 16 years now for my friend.
I understand your point, but the BMC was supposed to be under professional board control, with council oversight, correct? That’s a lot more than our group.
So, there doesn’t appear to have been any oversight.
Friendship or no, I would have been fired for that kind of crap, if it would have even been possible for me spend money without two other signatures.
We fuck up. Lose money, choose duff clients that stiff you on payments, have cost overruns that strip margins, blah blah blah, but we alway know how and why. In fact, we usually see it coming in time to cut losses, because we get weekly reports…
Edit: My point is, it isn’t justifiable. Or, at least, should not be. Nor has any adequate justification been presented. Or, to my knowledge, even an explanation of where the money went. To the stakeholders. The membership. WTF.
All I’ve seen is whitewashing and obfuscation.