Under-fire former BHC manager Raymonde Dill last night moved to deny many of the allegations levied against him in the Auditor General's special report into the management of the Government-funded agency.

He said far from him not following policy and procedure, he was in the process of setting up new guidelines for the various BHC departments when he was suspended from his post last summer because the old ones were so out of date.

He said this was an on-going process with several departments having already completed updates of their relevant sections and all that remained was review and approval by the board. But Mr. Dill said before he joined Bermuda Housing Corporation in November 1999, it was very apparent that there was no clear project management, which forced him to take remedial action once he was on board.

He said he commissioned an outside organisation to train the property department on project management and he also introduced a project control report for all jobs in the New Construction and Vacant and Derelict departments.

He said the report showed progress of any job, the percentage that had been completed, funds paid and those outstanding. No request for payment was approved without the new report procedure being completed, he said. And the sacked former manager said he wished to put his side across when it came to the issue of overruns and costs that were over and above the original estimate price.

He said the Auditor had stated in his report that he "feared something worse than mismanagement" in cost overruns, but Mr. Dill said there was nothing untoward.

"Overruns arise from changes in the specification and are approved by the BHC property officer prior to work being done," said Mr. Dill. "No payments were made by BHC without a control sheet and written explanations from the property officer concerning any overruns and reasons for same. How the auditor can claim that overruns were never questioned or rejected is a mystery to me, since he would have to have been there. The final documentation for the payment is on file."

And the ousted manager said he wanted to talk specifically about the 100 percent overrun mentioned in the report, when a $390,000 estimate for a new unit comprising of an upstairs apartment and two lower apartments, became a $790,000 demand for cash.

He said that job began in 1998 before his tenure at BHC and he described it as a "classic case of under-bidding and subsequent claims for additional charges after the contract was awarded."

Mr. Dill added: "I discovered the situation based on the new control reports that had been implemented and immediately took action. I dismissed the staff involved, dismissed the contractor, held discussions with the owners, contacted Police and BHC lawyers. This all must have been in 2000.

"I was still in discussion with the owners about resolving the matter when the allegations about BHC came up last year."

But Mr. Dill said an independent evaluation of the new property showed that it was actually worth $300,000 more than the $790,000 cash demand submitted by the contractor.

And he added: "How many three-unit properties do you know, which include a total of six bedrooms, that could be built for $390,000?"

But he said he had no idea whether that dispute with the owner of the units was ever resolved because he was suspended before it was finalised.

When it came to valuing properties that the BHC wished to purchase, Mr. Dill admitted that often no independent evaluation was carried out, although sometimes outside architectural firms were used to price properties, particularly if they were to be involved in modifications. But he said his property officers were very experienced at dealing with property values and said, besides, the market forces kept BHC in check.

But Mr. Dill said often BHC carried out too many property evaluations to pay $1,500 to independent surveyors each time, and when asked why BHC did not simply choose to independently value those homes they were definitely buying, he said it was not necessary. The Auditor General said during a set period, 12 homes were purchased by BHC and only one was independently valued outside of BHC.

When The Royal Gazette suggested that inside evaluations by property officers could be open to abuse, Mr. Dill said: "You are assuming that everybody in property is crooked. You can't go assuming that people are crooked.

"What you are saying is that the property officers don't have the skill. These people are in the construction industry - that's what they do. You wouldn't ask the Bank of Bermuda to get an independent assessment on someone who wants a mortgage after their own staff have already assessed it. It is the same scenario here." As for allegation of double billing by contractors, Mr. Dill said he had introduced controls to trap scenarios like that, and he said there were occasions were double billing was prevented.

But he said it was bound to happen some times. He added: "It's not as if double billing never happens in the world or never happens in the housing corporation. But the new control mechanism should have made identifying them that much easier and it did."

And on the issue of BHC securing loans to tenants for things outside of the usual remit relating largely to property, which the Auditor had claimed included such things as divorce settlements, tuition fees and debt repayment, again Mr. Dill said there was nothing untoward.

He said only twice were loans offered to families to help with tuition fees - and once was before his time at BHC - and on both occasions they were agreed by the directors.

He added: "I examined the case and believed there was some merit and the chap was desperate. We were the last resort for the family. The only asset the family had was the house. The son had an excellent academic record and the family had a very healthy mortgage with us and they were totally up to date. We could see no wrong in securing a loan for them."

And he said claims that loans were given for divorce settlements and debt repayments was purely what any bank or building society would do where their clients had a mortgage between them and were divorcing. He said, in simple terms, BHC enabled one of the partners to buy the other one out of their share of the property by offering them a loan secured on their mortgage.

He added: "The divorce settlement was totally linked to the house. Our job was to secure a roof over their heads and that's what we did. And it was totally collateralised to the first mortgage."