Every Bermudian has a right to feel angry and disgusted by the findings of the Auditor-General’s report for the fiscal years 2010, 2011 and 2012.

At that time, this community was dealing with the pain of widespread job losses, pay cuts, a real estate slump and a sharp slowdown in business generally — the consequences of a rapidly deepening recession. Meanwhile, certain people in the Bermuda Government were making a mockery of their responsibility as guardians of the public purse.

It’s a downright disgrace.

The financial instructions, a set of Civil Service rules that exist to guard against the wastage of public money, along with other basic procedures required for government spending, were apparently frequently ignored. As the report’s author, Heather Jacobs Matthews, put it: “It is evident that the policies, procedures and rules pertaining to capital expenditures are being violated to such an extent that it has now become the norm for which there are no consequences.”

That is an alarming statement. It does not automatically follow that corruption took place, but the culture that Ms Matthews describes certainly creates conditions in which fraud and theft would have been easier to perpetrate, with taxpayers the victims.

Public money belongs to the people, not the Government, just as bank deposits belong to the account holders, not the bank. Civil servants ignoring financial controls is the equivalent of the bank manager leaving the door of the safe unlocked.

Ms Matthews should be commended for her no-holds-barred reporting of what it would be polite to describe as appalling financial mismanagement. In her immensely difficult and important role as the independent, external auditor of government finances, she knows that the better she does her job, the more personal vilification she is likely to receive for it from those who may be harmed politically or professionally by revelations of the truth. She has fearlessly executed her task and her successor, Heather Thomas, will be well aware that she has a high standard to maintain.

One should bear in mind when reading Ms Matthews’s report that she did not have the time, nor the resources, to audit everything. But she and her team found enough in her areas of focus to indicate a culture of ignoring rules with impunity, sloppiness that would be comical if it did not come at a cost for every Bermudian, and tens of millions of dollars in expenditure beyond what our elected representatives had approved.

Duplicate payments and overpayments do happen in large organisations, of course, but some of the cases highlighted by Ms Matthews suggest staggering carelessness with large sums of money. Take the case of a contractor who was paid $759,721 by the Department of Airport Operations in 2010: more than one third of this amount — $256,336 — comprised an overpayment. In addition, outstanding payroll tax of $321,277 owed by the contractor was not deducted from the payment. This resulted in a loss of government revenue of $577,613. To compound the mistake, the payment was initially made to the wrong person, the project manager instead of the contractor, before the recipient pointed out the error and redirected the funds.

Ms Matthews also found $14 million of expenditures in 2010 that did not get the Cabinet approval they required, as well as millions of dollars in undocumented spending. In 2011, an estimated $62 million of expenditures that she tested were not tendered in compliance with financial instructions, including more than $18 million by the Department of Tourism alone.

Another observation in the report offers some insight into the routine nature of the financial mismanagement. “We requested supporting documentation for an estimated $35.5 million spent on capital contracts and purchases, and 15 per cent ($5.2 million) did not have supporting documentation,” Ms Matthews reported. “Of the remaining $30.3 million, many failed to comply with the applicable purchasing and approval standards. The majority lacked the required prior approval of Cabinet, did not have agreements or contracts and/or did not follow the basic tendering procedure.”

How can $5.2 million go out of the public coffers without documentation? That figure alone amounts to $100,000 for every week of the year, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg of what the report has uncovered.

Those who signed off on spending without following the rules “should be held accountable for breaches of compliance”, Ms Matthews states, and this newspaper fully supports that view. Several of the senior civil servants who held the purse strings at that time are still holding them today and, as the Auditor-General pointed out in her report, there were apparently no consequences for those who were lax in their duties.

If there is no accountability, bad behaviour will be repeated. That’s something that any parent can attest to.

In flagging up this state of affairs and investigating as far as her legal powers will allow, Ms Matthews has done her bit. Now it’s time for other authorities to seize the baton and investigate farther, whatever form that may take. To coin a phrase, it’s time to “look under the hood”.

There are glaring questions to which Bermudian taxpayers deserve to know the answers.

Was there misappropriation of funds during this period of loose oversight?

How will those identified in this report be held accountable?

Did civil servants come under pressure from politicians to ignore the rules they are required to follow?

As this report applies up to March 2012, have things improved over the past 3½ years or do the same problems persist?

This may have happened a few years ago, but by no means should it be regarded as water under the bridge. Lax financial controls inevitably lead to overspending — in this case, that has contributed to a public debt of more than $2 billion. That is very much a present problem and one that will linger long into the future.

We need to take the necessary steps to change the organisational culture within government to one that takes important rules seriously and treats the public’s money with respect. Really, it’s the least that taxpayers should expect.