The Louisiana Legislative Auditor released their annual management letter for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on Monday.
The report found some past issues had been resolved, that some repeat issues still had not been resolved, as well as mis-use of university credit cards - both by an athletics department employee and by someone who fradulently used a card that had been lost. There also was more than $70,000 in fraudulent activity in UL bank accounts.
Here's the auditor's summary:
For the fifth consecutive year, auditors found the university did not have adequate controls in place to ensure compliance with Special Tests and Provisions requirements related to personnel expenses charged to federal Research and Development (R&D) Cluster awards.
Also, for the fifth consecutive year, the university did not adequately monitor subrecipients of the R&D Cluster programs.
In addition, auditors noted that during the year, university officials discovered a former athletics department employee submitted falsified supporting documentation for football recruiting expenses charged to their LaCarte card.
Auditors also found the university failed to immediately notify the Louisiana Legislative Auditor and the Lafayette Parish District Attorney of this and two other instances of misappropriations of public funds, as required by state law.
Prior-year findings related to untimely billing related to grant and contract agreements and noncompliance with period of performance requirements were resolved.
Here's what UL sent out Monday morning in response:
The Louisiana Legislative Auditor is expected to release its fiscal year 2025 audit report for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on Monday.
The report includes three findings. Two involve federal research compliance processes that have been reported for the past four years and are related to federal grant administration. The third finding involves purchasing card expenses and reporting procedures.
“This audit reflects both the work that remains and the progress that has already been made,” said Dr. Ramesh Kolluru, University president, in a message to the campus community. “Accountability requires that we acknowledge problems, address them directly and make improvements where needed. That is exactly what we are doing.”
Kolluru said the University expects the two research-related findings will be resolved by the next audit cycle.
“The two research-related findings are not new. They involve federal grant administration and have been the focus of significant corrective work over the past 13 months,” Kolluru said. “We recognized that these findings would likely remain open during this audit cycle because the solutions required substantial changes to processes, organizational structure and oversight systems that could not be fully implemented before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, 2025. Over the past year, we have continued implementing those changes and strengthening the way research administration is managed. We expect these findings to be resolved in the next audit cycle because of those efforts.”
The third finding involved purchasing card expenses and reporting procedures. According to the report, the issues were identified through University monitoring processes and reviewed through established internal procedures. The University has already implemented additional safeguards related to expense review, employee training and reporting procedures and will continue strengthening accountability measures, Kolluru said.
The report also noted progress in areas previously identified for improvement. Two prior research compliance findings have been resolved and are no longer cited.
Here are the details on the mis-use of credit cards:
The report says a former employee of the athletics department submitted falsified supporting documentation for "football recruiting expenses" charged to their university card. The auditor opined that the actions could be in violation of university policy and state law.
The issues were discovered by UL purchasing staff in May 2025, when they discoverd that an Athletics Department football recruiting employee had submitted expense reports with "falsified documentation" for expenses charged to the card between November 2024 and March 2025. They sent that information on to UL's HR department and Office of Internal Audit. The audit office found that the employee told vendors "to include unallowable alcohol and food charges on vendor receipts as room rentals or event deposits." Nine items totalling $5,974 by the employee, they found. Another 10 items totalling $7,178 were submitted going back to 2021; these were submitted by the employee's predecessor and current supervisor - but they are described as "suspected but unconfirmed to be misrepresented."
Some of the money that was "confirmed to be misrepresented" was recovered through employee payroll deductions, and "the remaining amount has been routed for reimbursement through the University of Louisiana Foundation."
The employee resigned from the university on January 20, 2026. The employee’s supervisor is still employed by the university but their access to a university card has been revoked, the report states.
"The misrepresented charges were the result of attempted circumvention of LaCarte Card policy prohibiting alcohol purchases and the pre-approval process for food charges, avoidance of lengthy processing of charges through the University of Louisiana Foundation for reimbursement, and inadequate internal controls related to the review and approval of expense reports by the employee’s supervisor," the report states. "According to the Office of Internal Audit’s report, the employee’s supervisor approved expense reports without meaningful review, despite the supervisor being present at some events where unallowable charges were misrepresented on expense reports and later approved by the same supervisor. The LLA was notified in writing on December 18, 2025 of the ongoing internal audit investigation. As of March 17, 2026, UL Lafayette had not yet notified the DA of the misappropriation."
UL's response says the DA was notified in April 2026.
In a separate case, UL internal controls detected unauthorized activity in two bank accounts in 2025 - totaling more than $70,000. A police report was filed and internal auditors were notified, but the Legislative Auditor wasn't notified until three months later. The DA wasn't notified until a month after that - after the Legislative Auditor asked about it.
The charges were fully reimbursed by the bank, the report states.
But the university's "failure to immediately notify the LLA and DA in accordance with Louisiana Revised Statute (LA R.S.) 24:523 is the result of UL Lafayette lacking a written policy governing how misappropriations should be reported internally to the President and externally to the LLA and DA," the report states.
Here's the full report, which includes findings as well as the university's plans to correct found issues, so you can read it for yourself:
