Detail of Accrued Settlement Fees-1

After attempting for more than a week to privately address the significant errors in the supposed independent audit of Pacifica’s FY2013 fiscal year, it is time to notify the members of the foundation that the document is incorrect and it appears to be fraudulent.

If you will bear with me to explain some accounting lingo below, I will demonstrate the errors, document the stonewalling from Pacifica’s financial staff, and then discuss why Pacifica is, at a cost of some $80,000 to the foundation’s members, offering up inaccurate financial records.

Pacifica Radio uses a method of accounting that is called accrual accounting. Most organizations use this method. In accrual accounting, expenses are recorded when the bills for them come in. If the expense is recorded and not paid within the duration of the financial period being audited, then the expense *becomes* an account payable on the balance sheet. If an expense is paid within the duration of the financial period being audited, then the expense does *not become* an account payable on the balance sheet. At the end of the year, any expenses that have not been recorded (or “accrued”) get recorded in order to provide an accurate picture of the total financial obligations of the organization.

An expense is only recorded once. Once it has been recorded, it can only be paid, remain unpaid as an account payable or be written off if the vendor forgives the debt. There is no other outcome possible for a recorded expense.

I probably won’t be surprising anyone if I state that the Pacifica Foundation has a lot of legal bills. The audit committee asked, correctly, for a list of the legal bills accrued in the recently completed draft audit. This is the list that they received from auditor Armanino LLC.

(The document is attached below. Here is the contents. Since these matters have been litigated, they are not confidential)

Disclosure of Accrued Settlements and Claims

Free Speech Radio News  2012-2013 $226,698

Bogatin, Corman and Gold 2012-2013 $59,071

Robert Half Accounting Personnel 2013 -2014 $36,000

Accounting Principals 2013-2014 $28,000

Great America 2012  $11,000

R. Kathkouda/AIG – Lawsuit Deductible 2008-2010 $125,000

E. Manilla/AIG – Lawsuit Deductible 2011-2012 $125,000

J Hughes – Severance – 2013 $42,000

Silverman and Silverman (Cohen vs Pacifica 2007-2008) $62,000

Total $715,000

While some of these bills may not have come to your attention, in most cases all or most of these debts are generally known by many members of the Pacifica community, as the litigation that ensued were public matters. Therefore it would be surprising if the expenses in question had not been recorded at the time the bills came in. With the exception of the severance agreement for the resigned WPFW manager, these are not additional or new expenses, new claims or otherwise unknown debts. The “claim” consists of an agreement by Pacifica to pay the amounts owed going forward on an installment plan. In other words, to pay their bills.

Lo and behold, factual evidence exists that several of these bills were recorded in previous years, a number of them in the 2011-2012 fiscal year and others even further back than that, like the Kathkouda deductible (a case that ended four and a half years ago).

That evidence was brought to the attention of the Pacifica National Board as double-accruing i.e. recording expenses at the time they came in and then recording them AGAIN in the FY 2013 audit per the list enclosed as if they were new settlements or new claims against the foundation instead of the same old bills.

The response from CFO Salvador was deeply troubling:

“In response to your inquiry, based on our re-examination of the accounting records of Pacifica Foundation, we would like to inform you that there were no double booking of expenses relating to legal expenses contrary to your claims.   Expenses were properly recorded in the period they were incurred.  It appears that your concerns about duplication are due to the fact that you are confusing expenses recorded on the income statement with the accrued expenses recorded on the balance sheet”

Now to take this slowly: expenses recorded on the income statement in previous years and still unpaid ARE recorded on the balance sheet. An expense from a previous year is either paid, in which case it is no longer an account payable, or it is unpaid, in which case it is still an account payable.

The enclosed accounting tutorial is helpful: http://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/accruals-on-balance-sheet

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What are accrued expenses and when are they recorded?

Accrued expenses are expenses that have occurred but are not yet recorded through the normal processing of transactions. Since these expenses are not yet in the accountant’s general ledger, they will not appear on the financial statements unless an adjusting entry is entered prior to the preparation of the financial statements.

Where are accruals reflected on the balance sheet?

Accrued expenses are reported in the current liabilities section of the balance sheet. Accrued expenses reported as current liabilities are the expenses that a company has incurred as of the balance sheet date, but have not yet been recorded or paid. Typical accrued expenses include wages, interest, utilities, repairs, bonuses, and taxes.

Accrued revenues are reported in the current assets section of the balance sheet. The accrued revenues reported on the balance sheet are the amounts earned by the company as of the balance sheet date that have not yet been recorded and the customers have not yet paid the company.

Accrued expenses and accrued revenues are also reflected in the income statement and in the statement of cash flows prepared under the indirect method. However, these financial statements reflect a time period instead of a point in time.

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Let’s take the bolded section out. Accrued expenses reported as current liabilities are the expenses that a company has incurred as of the balance sheet date, but have not yet been recorded or paid.

Mr. Salvador’s statement is therefore factually impossible. Accrued expenses on the balance sheet cannot consist of expenses that were recorded in the period they were incurred. Accrued expenses on a balance sheet are those that have not yet been recorded as of the balance sheet date.

To state that expenses were recorded at the time they were incurred, but are also listed as accrued expenses on the balance sheet is to confirm they are double-accrued as an expense cannot be both recorded and not recorded.

So what does this mean and what is Pacifica up to?

What it means is that a bunch of expenses, certainly as much as a quarter million dollars and probably in excess of half a million dollars seem to be double-counted, with Pacifica desiring to show a big paper loss that is far larger than what they actually lost.

From the point of view of donors, funders,and collaborators of every kind, it is wildly destructive to present overstated financial losses. From the point of view of members of the foundation, the board of directors and the staff they have hired are misrepresenting Pacifica’s financial records and charging the members $80,000 to do it. From the point of view of a nonprofit organization already under state investigation, an audited financial statement that is inaccurate places the board and the nonprofit as a whole in an extremely compromising position.

Why are they doing this? It is tempting to simply respond that this is an incompetent board of directors and management staff, but if it were merely incompetence,  the response to the documentation would be “oops”.

Since that is not the response, other conclusions are in order. When confronted with an seemingly irrational scenario, the question is “cui bono”. Who benefits from overstating Pacifica’s losses by hundreds of thousands of dollars?

The answer is those who see bankruptcy court and dissolution as the answer to their prayers. Those whose fantasies are that if they could just get out from under “Pacifica”, everything would be okay. A psychotic fantasy, that, but one widely held within the network.

The PNB and audit committee are in possession of email communications documenting that at least three of these items totaling in excess of $250,000 (Manilla, Bogatin and Silverman) were recorded in previous years and therefore any unpaid portions are nothing more than carried over accounts payable from the previous year’s totals. I will not provide those emails right now, but will do so in the future if the PNB does not take appropriate action.

At a minimum, you must acquire the following immediately from your CFO and the audit firm.

1) An itemization of the entirety of the $4.017 million declared as accounts payables in the FY 2013 audit including the demarcation of what is carried over from the $2.7 million listed in the FY 2012 audit and what was newly added in FY 2013.

2) An itemization of the entirety of the $1.184 million declared as accrued expenses in the FY 2013 audit including the demarcation of what is carried over from the $642K listed in the FY 2012 audit (nothing should have been) and what was newly added in FY 2013.

Sincerely,

Tracy Rosenberg