“Someone dropped the ball at Treasury and the money ended up in Mike’s (Michael McDonald’s) account, it’s not his fault,” was the explanation by Department of Agriculture, Deputy Director Peter Gurr, responding to Samoa News queries regarding the “missing grant funding of $9,000+ for DOA.”

Samoa News was told that an investigation is ongoing into the issue — as to how McDonald’s bank account ended up with money from a DOA grant.

Commissioner of Public Safety Save Liuato Tuitele has confirmed that an investigation is on going in this matter and that they are continuing to interview the DOA Director, who has only recently returned and other DOA employees along with Treasury employees. Asked for a preliminary on this case, Save said someone at Treasury is lying and they will get to the bottom of this matter.

McDonald, who’s currently with the Department of Commerce, was working as a consultant/ grant writer for the Department of Agriculture securing grants for “specialty crops, a specific program through USDA,” according to Gurr, adding that DOA received more than $800,000 from the grant which McDonald worked on.

According to the DOA Deputy Director, McDonald has been working as a consultant with their office since 2012 and has successfully brought down grants assisting the DOA programs. He told Samoa News that the money in question was the grant called the CAPS, which another employee of DOA was working on and McDonald had nothing to do with.

He explained that the deal they had with McDonald was that he would get a certain percentage of any grant funding he secures, and for the Speciality Crops and the $800,000, he was supposed to get a paycheck of $9,000+.

Gurr explained that while they were waiting on their CAPS grant of $9,494, they were surprised to be informed that it had been deposited into McDonald’s business account.

“We brought him in and spoke to him and found out it was a misunderstanding and someone dropped the ball at Treasury and the money ended up in Mike’s account. It’s not his fault,” said Gurr.

He told Samoa News that McDonald had nothing to do with the CAPS grant, yet someone at Treasury had transferred the money into his account, and McDonald was under the impression that it was his paycheck from the $800,000 he had secured from USDA for the Specialty Crops.

According to Gurr, he and DOA Director, Lealao Melila Purcell were aware of the money that was in McDonald’s account but the understanding was — that it was his paycheck. He went on to say that when it was uncovered that it was not McDonald’s paycheck, but instead was the CAPS grant, he said McDonald was asked to repay the money and that’s what he did.

“He paid back the money,” said Gurr, who reiterated that it was not McDonald, who had deposited the money into his account, rather it was a transfer from Treasury, a whole “misunderstanding.”

Gurr told Samoa News “someone at Treasury is lying. Someone dropped the ball and I hope this investigation will reveal that because there is no way McDonald could deposit the money into his own account when he doesn’t have access to the money; it was at Treasury.”

Samoa News also asked if McDonald has received payment for the $800,000+ grant that he secured, and Gurr replied, “No.”

Samoa News reached out to McDonald for a comment, however, he declined, but did confirm that he had paid back the money which he assumed was his paycheck.

McDonald also said that to date he has yet to be compensated for the grant funding he secured for DOA.

Efforts to get comments from the Treasury Office on this matter were unsuccessful as of press time.