Statement by MinLaw on AGO Report Audit Observations relating to the Insolvency and Public Trustee’s Office (IPTO)
9 September 2025 Posted in Press releases
1. The Ministry of Law (MinLaw) takes the audit observations made by the Auditor-General’s Office seriously and has taken steps to address both observations.
2. First, on the investment of monies held in the Companies Liquidation Account (CLA)1, MinLaw acknowledges that under existing regulations these monies should only have been invested upon requests from liquidators.
3. When no such requests were received, these monies should have remained in the CLA, which is maintained as a current account with a bank. However, MinLaw placed those monies in fixed deposits through the Accountant-General’s Department (AGD)2 instead of leaving them in this current account earning lower interest. There was nonetheless no misuse of public funds and no losses arising from the fixed deposit investments, and no company undergoing compulsory liquidation was financially disadvantaged arising from this.
4. MinLaw has taken steps to ensure that monies will not be invested in the absence of liquidators’ requests. A new investment framework has been implemented to ensure that CLA monies will be placed in bank fixed deposits only upon liquidators’ request.
5. Second, on the access controls within IPTO’s case processing systems, MinLaw acknowledges the need for stronger safeguards. While no fraudulent activities or malicious intent was found, MinLaw has since put in place additional audit processes to detect and deter any unauthorised access by officers to the respective systems, and to ensure that officers’ system access rights are updated whenever there are changes of roles in IPTO. These additional measures have been implemented from 1 April 2025 and form part of ongoing efforts to enhance governance and accountability in MinLaw’s operations.
6. MinLaw remains committed to continually improving our processes to ensure transparency, good governance, and accountability to our stakeholders.
MINISTRY OF LAW
9 SEPTEMBER 2025
1. This refers to monies received by liquidators while administering the compulsory winding up of companies and then deposited in the CLA.↩
2. The placements into fixed deposits were through the Centralised Liquidity Management (CLM) framework. Under the CLM, all bank accounts maintained by Ministries and Statutory Boards are linked to AGD’s bank account, enabling the automatic aggregation of excess cash from these accounts for centralised management.↩