The Ministry of Finance is cracking down on illegal overspending in Government departments after 14 of them collectively overspent $2.4 million last year.

Auditor General Larry Dennis said in his annual report the Police were the worst offenders with an extra bill of more than $700,000 while his own department had also busted its budget.

He said the 14 overspendings were serious legal infractions which by-passed Parliament and broke the Bermuda Constitution.

?Departments that over over-spend their appropriations without first obtaining the Supplementary Estimates, incur illegal expenditures.?

However he noted the Ministry of Finance had taken steps to address the problem over the last four years, driving down the number of offences and the amount of cash lost.

He said: ?In recent years the Minister of Finance has required each department that exceeds its legislated expenditure limits to submit explanations and submissions explaining their conduct.

?The Minister has stated an intention to apply sanctions against Departments that exceed their limits for two consecutive years.

?I would have expected the actions taken by the Minister of Finance to have convinced Departments that overspending their appropriations is a serious legal infraction.

?It is breaking the law. I am disappointed, therefore, that some Departments do it repeatedly.?

However Mr. Dennis pointed out his own department had illegally overspent its 2003 allocation with current account expenditures overspent by $178,703 and capital acquisitions overspent by $20,000.

Mr. Dennis said Government had unexpectedly asked him to relocate his office in September 2002 and the new premises were considerably more expensive. He said there were unbudgeted costs associated with the move.

?Secondly, during 2002-3 significant staff resources were assigned to the special investigations of the Bermuda Housing Corporation and the Berkeley Institute Senior School Capital Project.

?More than 2,300 staff hours were spent on the investigations and one Senior Audit Manager is still assisting the Police with their work.?

Mr. Dennis said he had been forced to enlist local accountancy firms to help out with work normally done by his staff.

He said he had submitted requests for supplementary budget estimates but the second request had not been approved by March 31, 2003.

In a response published in Mr. Dennis? report Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith said his department?s overspend of $732,114 was partly because of payroll variations including overtime because of the unpredictable nature of the job.

A pay award which came after the deadline for submitting supplementary estimates was also to blame said Mr. Smith.