Q. I’ve been a board member for five years. I got elected as treasurer and we had a board president that’s been president for several years doing all the board’s duties and got reelected again.

I was assuming that I was supposed to recover all records from him having to do with the treasury. He has slowly given me some records because he comes back from work at times really late in the evening... Now five years later I still haven’t gotten all the records from him and he has been doing my job as treasurer and after I told him to stop doing my job at a board meeting he got up and wanted to fight me. So I started to do a forensic audit of our books and found plenty of inappropriate transactions all the way back to 11 years ago. And as recently as the last four months of 2020, he has written close to $36,000 made out to cash. I need to know who I can report this problem to? 

                           —Ticked off Treasurer 

A. “If the building has a managing agent and/or independent accountant, the discrepancy should be brought to their attention,” says attorney Lisa A. Smith, partner at the New York City offices of law firm Smith Gambrell Russell LLP. “If there are concerns that the accountant may not be independent, the board could engage a forensic accountant to perform a complete review of the books and records. Depending on the amount of the discrepancy, and whether or not the missing funds are returned, the board may want to consider legal action and/or notifying the district attorney.”