Former athletic director Mark Hollis and his staff failed for years to fix lax financial oversight in Michigan State University’s athletic department, according to internal audits that reported some of the same problems year after year.
An MSU spokeswoman said auditors found no evidence of fraud and the audits mention no missing funds. Yet the university’s in-house audit team repeatedly warned Hollis and former MSU president Lou Anna Simon that sports staffers were not adequately following university financial procedures, according to reports obtained by the Lansing State Journal through a public records request.
Audit reports going ignored has been a common theme so far this year, with a case causing problems in the city of Atlanta. The city of Atlanta’s internal audit function warned city officials of various cybersecurity vulnerabilities months before a recent ransomware cyberattack that has crippled its IT systems. Institute of Internal Auditors president, Richard Chambers, even posted a blog on the topic.
Oddly enough, MSU isn’t even the only university in Michigan to have problems on compliance with the findings of an internal audit report. Officials at its rival, Michigan University, are currently in a dispute over the validity of findings from an audit of the university’s investment office. University of Michigan officials say that a 2014 internal audit of its investment office, which controls a $10 billion endowment, reached several faulty conclusions.