noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646
DURHAM — A top UNC system official will head to North Carolina Central University today to help guide an internal review of a draft report that suggested university employees had stolen thousands of dollars.
Jeff Henderson, the UNC General Administration’s assistant vice president for audit and financial reporting, is helping spearhead an investigation into the accuracy of a memo that said staffers at the campus-based Historically Minority Colleges and University Consortium had diverted more than $200,000.
“We’re working with the internal audit shop at North Carolina Central, looking at the work they’ve done, reviewing the work and making sure that the information that gets into the final report is completely supported,” Henderson said.
The original charges came in a confidential memo from the head of the NCCU internal audit office to NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms, who has dismissed the leaked report as “sloppy, unprofessional and unacceptable” and has fired the auditor who compiled the memo.
Henderson was delegated to work with NCCU after a request from Nelms. He will work with personnel in the NCCU offices of internal audit, budget and finance, legal affairs, and chief of staff in an attempt to verify the contents of the memo.
“We’re not sure how that memo got out there [to the public], but because it’s out there now, General Administration was asked to participate in the review,” Henderson said. “There’s a lot of stuff in there that needs to be looked at to verify that it is appropriately supported. We want to make sure the numbers are supportable and that the conclusions are as beyond reproach as possible.”
Henderson, who spent three decades with the state auditor’s office, already has been to the NCCU campus a couple of times to work with the audit office there. Most of the review work has been done, he said, but “we want to continue to make sure all the numbers involved can be documented. I can’t speak to the accuracy of [the memo] yet, but that’s what I’ll be getting into [today].”
Nelms said last week that the review would be “completed as expeditiously as possible.” Henderson estimated Monday that a full review and report might take several weeks.
“I would think in a couple of weeks, we’ll have it done,” he said. “But we’ll understand more about that after [today].”
The consortium receives state, federal and private grants to help minority children across the state close the achievement gap. One of the agency’s leaders, who allegedly received a majority of the diverted funds, was fired last fall for poor performance, according to Nelms.
