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With more from Financial Secretary Joseph Waight, he has conceded that the millions of dollars in payments made to a company connected with members of the Mira family were processed in a manner that circumvented established government oversight controls. Asked about the pattern, Waight acknowledged that the government’s financial management system was designed specifically to prevent the circumvention of oversight controls. He explained that the repeated use of invoices just below the approval threshold raises serious concerns and appears inconsistent with how the system is intended to function. Waight noted that while the Auditor General’s investigation will ultimately determine intent, the pattern does appear to suggest a deliberate effort to fragment payments and avoid higher levels of scrutiny.
Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary: “Clearly there’s a breakdown in the system. It wasn’t intended to work this way. It takes, in our system, there are levels of approval depending on the amount of money. There’s a first approval, a second approval, on any payment that goes through. Depending on the level, if it exceeds a certain ceiling it goes to a third approval at the Treasury. It appears from what we see that there was a deliberate effort to fragment payments, break them down to below. But I’ll wait to see what the audit reveals. But sure enough, certainly it doesn’t look good. In my view, I think what happened is that either somebody dropped a ball, fell asleep, or worse they are moving together on it. Now whether that can be put to the feet of Minister Mira, I can’t say. I do know that when it comes to food supplies there are regular deliveries and then there should be regular payments. And I’m told that in some cases they would batch the payments together and process them in one day for their convenience. That is the convenience of their accounting staff, the convenience sometimes the supplier would wait till the end of the month and drop a bunch of payments and then it go through. But I don’t think that’s the whole explanation. That could be a contributing factor. I don’t know. The audit will tell. But certainly the system wasn’t designed to produce what we’re seeing.”
Reporter: Do you believe that these should have been flagged though ?
Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary: “If you see a whole lot of payments going through it should have raised an alarm and should have raised an eyebrow. I think so. I don’t think it’s an increase in the consumption of the ministry. It could be a concentration in one or two suppliers. But remember, you have to feed your guys. So if it’s not coming from one place, it’s coming from another. This seems to be a concentration. I don’t know.”
Reporter: What do you mean by concentration?
Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary: “One or two suppliers only.”
Reporter: One or two suppliers only.
Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary: “But I need to find out more how the tendering went and all of that.”
FinSec Waight went on to explain that the government’s accounting framework requires different levels of review depending on the value of an expenditure. According to Waight, the safeguards were intentionally built into the system to ensure accountability and transparency whenever public funds are being spent. He stressed that the current pattern of payments appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon and does not align with the manner in which the system was originally designed to operate.
Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary: Each Ministry has what we call an accounting section manned by clerks. You have second, first class, you have finance officers and usually a clerk would prepare what we call a smart stream invoice, a payment, and that is approved by a second person and it goes through if it’s below a certain threshold. In this case the threshold is $10,000. If it goes above, if the payment is above, it goes to a third at the Treasury. Treasury looks at it and says alright it looks good and make the payment. But every ministry has an accounting section, some have big ones like health for instance or you know, we have a small one at the ministry of finance because we make a few payments a day, maybe a dozen or so. We’re not in that, but some ministries have a lot and therefore there’s quite a bit of volume. And then of course on top of the finance officer you have the accounting officer and the accounting officer should really take time and look at how the money is flowing through the system. Something under $10,000 you issue a purchase order, it comes back with the receipt, not the receipt the invoice. Somebody signs that items have been received in good condition and then the payment starts. The payment starts somebody raises the invoice in the system usually a junior clerk. The senior clerk signs that, senior clerk or the FO then looks at it again, makes sure it’s all right, check to see that all the paperwork is in order, the purchase order was there, the invoice is correct, the goods were received in good condition and then you sign off, payment goes through. If it’s below $10,000. If it’s above $10,000, those two steps are still taken but then a third step is somebody at treasury monitors it and sends it through again.”
The records also show that the largest concentration of payments occurred during September 2025, when Oscar Mira was serving as Minister of Defence. During that single month, MP Farms reportedly received approximately six hundred and eighty thousand dollars in government payments. A review of more than fifty newly leaked SmartStream screenshots shows that MP Farms received approximately five-point-seven-four million dollars in government payments over a period of just twenty-one and a half months, between September 2024 and June 2026. /
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