Financial Scandal Era Audits near completion as EDA ponders Budget Adjustments

Friday evening, July 23rd, through the office of Administrative Assistant Gretchen Henderson, the Warren County Economic Development Authority (EDA) released a summary of action items on the agenda of the EDA Board of Directors regular monthly meeting held that morning. Prominent on that agenda were matters related to the completion of the contracted audits of the EDA’s Fiscal Year 2018 and 2019 budgets. Those were the final two full years of leadership under past board member and former Executive Director Jennifer McDonald.

The audits are expected to shed some light on how and under what rationales EDA assets were moved or committed to projects during the final two years of what related civil suits against McDonald and alleged co-conspirators assert was a conspiracy to defraud the EDA and move its assets to the personal benefit of McDonald and others. The EDA civil actions seeking recovery of those allegedly misappropriated assets cite activities believed to have been occurring at least between 2014 and 2018. Brown Edwards, the contracted auditing firm doing those audits, is not the same company that did the EDA audits annually during the alleged financial scandal. Discussion of potential liability of that previous auditor for not recognizing/alerting the EDA to unusual money movement has been broached, if not pursued at this point. The total amount of allegedly embezzled assets has fluctuated between $26 million and a recent jump to $62 million related to McDonald’s Chapter 7 Bankruptcy filing.

See related story on recent rulings in McDonald’s Bankruptcy Court filing and the EDA’s civil litigation against alleged embezzlement-misappropriation of EDA funds co-defendant ITFederal

EDA and McDonald agree to $9-million exemption to her bankruptcy claim

EDA crunches operational budget numbers, moves scandal year audits forward