Bullying IV: If It Smells Like A Fish, Bury It
Here’s a quick update on the last post:
I recently spoke with a reliable contact from the non-profit organization I used to work for here. As of recently, he is no longer employed there either.
It turns out that several weeks ago a discrepancy was discovered in the books. Since this organization is primarily funded by the state, they frequently bill the State of Hawai`i back for their services. At some point a $15,000 overpayment by the state was discovered by the accounting department. When this was brought to the attention of the company officers to make arrangements to pay the state back, to paraphrase "We aren’t giving anything back to the state!"
A couple of weeks later, both long term accounting people were harassed out of their positions… forced to quit for questioning the wisdom of not giving money back to the state. The high level company officer who made the statement got a raise, as well as giving a raise to his main "hit person."
Due to the nature of non-profits, it is "normal" (and company policy) for employees to receive small raises (2 - 3%) once a year. Both the above employees, according to my source, received 5% raises.
Both ex accounting people are also now being accused of overpaying themselves and have received nasty threatening letters from the same company official. A point of information… neither of the accounting employees had signature authority to sign dual-signature checks. Checks had to be presented to the same (above) company official with justification for signature.
Soo… It is my feeling that had any real investigation into the company been done, it would have shown some pretty flaky and quite possibly illegal practices. It’s evident that the government simply chooses to stick their heads in the sand when they smell something bad.
DB