The failings of the Audit Committee are damaging Bermuda’s reputation as a good place to do business, Shadow Finance Minister Bob Richards claimed last night.Mr Richards says Government’s failure to get its financial information into the public domain makes the Island look like a banana republic.Auditor General Heather Matthews says she has been unable to publish her annual reports for 2008/09 and 2009/10 because the Audit Committee didn’t performed its duties in 2011.Last night, Mr Richards questioned how, almost a month after the committee’s shortcomings were highlighted in the House of Assembly, Premier and Finance Minister Paula Cox has still not resolved the issue.Reacting to Ms Matthews’ confirmation that the reports remain unfiled, the One Bermuda Alliance MP told The Royal Gazette: “I was astonished to see that this matter had not been resolved by now.“The letter from the Auditor General came to the House in December. It wasn’t the last day, it was maybe a couple of meetings before the last day.“I would have thought almost a month has passed, irrespective of any holidays, whatever differences they had should have been resolved, so we have the financial information of the Government’s performance in our hands by now. But we don’t.“This is something that’s been going on for decades in a reasonable fashion. But this kind of drama is unfortunate; it really impacts negatively on the way business is done in Bermuda.“We are really starting to look like a banana republic and that doesn’t reflect well on this country.”Ms Matthews is not able to publish her reports until they have been reviewed by the Audit Committee, of which Ms Cox, as Finance Minister, is an ex officio member.However, throughout 2011 the Committee suffered from conflicts of interest and poor attendance, with Ms Cox criticised for failing to show at one key meeting.Yesterday, this newspaper reported a strongly-worded statement from Ms Matthews, saying Ms Cox had misled the public by playing down the seriousness of these failings.Mr Richards has previously suggested the Audit Committee deliberately failed to meet so that Government wouldn’t have to make embarrassing financial information public.Yesterday, he said the prolonged nature of the issue is now harming public confidence in Government.“If a Government can’t get its financial statements past the auditor and into the hands of the public in a timely and orderly fashion, it impacts on confidence in the Government and Bermuda as a whole as a place where normal business is conducted,” he said.“If we had the information from the reports, we would now be able to chew on it. But we don’t have that information. It’s one thing to have bad news, it’s another to have no news. When you have no news, the imagination takes over and that’s not good for Bermuda.“We have confidence at a low ebb and the Government is making it worse. It’s the responsibility of the Minister to get this information to the public.”In a statement released last night, a Government spokesman said that Government has regularly released financial performance figures.“The Shadow Minister of Finance should be aware that in the Pre-Budget Report released in December, the Government of Bermuda released financial performance numbers for the past financial year,” the spokesman said. “The Government also released performance information on the first six months of the current fiscal year.“Therefore, performance information has been released in accordance with Government’s commitment to effecting ongoing improvements in its Public Accounts and in transparency to Parliament and the people of Bermuda.”The spokesman said that the reports pending review by the Audit Committee are not for the past fiscal year, but are the Reports of the Auditor General on the Work of the Office of the Auditor General and on the Accounts of the Government of Bermuda for the Financial Years April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009 and April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010.“The audited financial statements of the Consolidated Fund for these years have already been audited and tabled in the House of Assembly,” the spokesman said.“It is expected that the Audit Committee will meet in the near future to conclude its work so that the Reports of the Auditor General on the Work of the Office of the Auditor General and on the Accounts of the Government of Bermuda can be tabled and released to the public as per the Audit Act 1990.“It must also be made abundantly clear, that the Audit Committee meets on the direction of the Chair, not the Minister who is an ex officio member of the Committee.”