Tancoo: CAL spent $60m on audits but filed no accounts

News Andrew Gioannetti 3 Hrs Ago

Minister of Finance Davendranath Tancoo greets party supporters outside the Parliament before his maiden budget presentation on October 13. - Photo by Angelo Marcelle

Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo has accused the former administration of presiding over “criminal negligence” at Caribbean Airlines Ltd (CAL), revealing the airline spent more than $60 million on audits but failed to submit any audited financial statements for nearly a decade.

Speaking during his 2025/2026 budget presentation in Parliament on October 13, Tancoo said CAL had engaged international firms Ernst & Young and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to conduct audits, yet no statements were ever filed.

“CAL’s management spent more than $60 million on audits from Ernst and Young and PwC but still failed to submit a single audited financial statement to the Ministry of Finance for over nine years,” he said.

Despite this, he said the former finance minister had “repeatedly approved financing for CAL in 2017, 2018, 2019, and as recently as March 2025 to cover operational pressures,” ignoring the lack of transparency.

“The former minister closed his eyes as CAL descended into inefficiency, non-compliance and fiscal indiscipline,” Tancoo said, calling it “nothing short of criminal negligence.”

Tancoo said his ministry has now installed a new board to “make the hard decisions required to fix our national airline” and restore accountability in the state enterprise sector.

He also said the Ministry of Finance is updating the "obsolete" State Enterprise Performance Monitoring Manual.

"We are replacing outdated frameworks with modern governance standards," said Tancoo. "This will ensure the best international practices concerning corporate governance, accountability, transparency and delivering value for taxpayers’ money."