The revelations this week by former Bermuda Land Development Chairman Ed Saunders and his deputy, Leroy Bean, demonstrate very well that the Government quango was in a mess before they took over.With rental arrears of almost $2.5 million on the books, and a range of other examples of poor management, it is clear that things at the organisation had gone badly off the rails.And it is equally worrying that very little seemed to have been done, then or since, to hold officials accountable, both within the management team and at the board level.Just how did $500,000 get spent on plans for Marginal Wharf, only for nothing to happen?It would also be good to know what has happened since. Mr Saunders said $600,000 had been collected within six months. But what about the other $1.9 million owed?So Mr Saunders and Mr Bean found problems when they were appointed to the board. But that does not mean they were necessarily the right people to write a report, or to be paid $160,000 for it.It is good news that professional firms of lawyers and accountants have found that the appointments and payments were permitted within the rules governing the BLDC.But that does not mean the decision was necessarily wise or ethical.It is also true that Mr Saunders and Mr Bean conducted substantial investigations into problems at the BLDC, and uncovered many areas of concern.What is clear, and what the report finds, is that the board of the BLDC had failed to ensure that the management of the company was accountable.Mr Saunders emphasised the importance of the creation of a collections department by himself and Mr Bean.But when you have tenants who are almost $2.5 million in arrears, wasn’t the decision to pursue them more aggressively rather obvious? Isn’t it the kind of decision that a board should be making anyway?At some point, the board should have ensured the management of the company got a grip on the arrears before things deteriorated to that point.But that did not happen. What that means is that the board failed in its duties. Mr Saunders and Mr Bean’s proposed to fix that problem by spending two full days a month at the company to act as consultants to make sure that their recommendations were carried out.But that is not a long term or sustainable solution to a systemic problem. What would happen when a new chairman or deputy were appointed? Would they get the same consultancies? The risk is that the consultancies would become self-perpetuating.It does seem that Mr Saunders and Mr Bean carried out their functions with the best of intentions and had the best interests of the BLDC at heart.But they failed to recognise that when they proposed fees for themselves, the rest of the board was unlikely to turn them down, even if they recused themselves from the discussion and vote.And they also failed to see that by making themselves both members of the board and consultants to the board, that they would remove a critical level of accountability since they would end up reporting to themselves.Whether or not their report was worth $160,000 is impossible to say. The only people who could really say that is the board itself. But since members of the board were the ones being paid, they cannot be objective about it. And that’s the problem.