With a final Public Accounts Committee report on the subject to be published on Monday, the St Mary Deputy has alleged that States Treasurer Ian Black has been made a scapegoat for the errors of Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur, chief executive Bill Ogley and deputy chief executive John Richardson.
Deputy Wimberley says that the real cost of the failure to fix the exchange rates for the euro portions of the contact is £11 million and that the States were misled about the cost of the project last year.
He also says that States standing orders which require honesty ‘have been systematically broken by ministers’. ‘It is a shameful story of dishonesty and scapegoating,’ said Deputy Wimberley. ‘I don’t know which is worse – ministers deceiving the States, the Chief Minister deceiving Public Accounts Committee, or seeing the thieves, caught red-handed, pinning all the blame onto one of their number in order to get off the hook.’
