Former CapRadio GM is central figure in Sac State-ordered audit, station’s newsroom reports
The release of a forensic analysis last week into Capital Public Radio’s finances heaped new scrutiny on the beleaguered station as the report detailed unexplained expenditures and possible conflicts of interest.
Mentioned more than 100 times in the audit summary was an unidentified “Subject #1” who according to the forensic report was linked to at least $460,800 in payments “without corresponding evidence of expense reports and/or receipts.” That person had at least some influence over the station’s finances, according to the review.
CapRadio’s news staff on Tuesday first reported that Jun Reina, CapRadio’s former executive vice president and general manager, is “Subject #1” in the audit.
Reina joined in 2007 and served in numerous executive roles before leaving the public radio station in 2023. CapRadio published the information after a reporter at the station reviewed an unredacted hard copy version of the audit.
CliftonLarsonAllen, a Roseville-based accounting firm that prepared the audit ordered by Sacramento State, wrote that it focused its forensic review on the period of July 2020 through June 2023, because this period “is understood to be when Subject #1 had the most influence over the finances of CPR.” Reina served as general manager from July 1, 2020, through June 2023, CapRadio reported Tuesday.
CapRadio on Friday, in response to a California Public Records Act request, provided The Sacramento Bee with board of directors finance committee meeting minutes and other documents that were referenced in last week’s audit but removed as redactions. The documents confirm Subject #1 as Reina.
The Bee also obtained a copy of the lease agreement from 2021 for CapRadio’s planned new downtown headquarters at 730 I St. The planned move and related documents were flagged in both last week’s audit and a separate examination into CapRadio’s finances that was released by the California State University system last year.
The lease document was signed by Reina in March 2021, which aligns with a time frame detailed in the audit released last week.
Sacramento State, which holds the broadcast licenses for CapRadio, on Aug. 5 released a summary of the audit report to the university’s website.
University President Luke Wood said in a campus email the day the audit was released that the redactions were included to “avoid jeopardizing a related investigation by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.”
Sacramento State this week rejected The Bee’s Public Records Act request seeking the unredacted copy of the audit, citing exemptions that pertain to “ongoing law enforcement investigation.”
Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Amar Gandhi last week confirmed that deputies months ago began investigating “financial improprieties” at CapRadio, but declined to comment on specific persons involved. Gandhi on Tuesday declined to confirm whether the Sheriff’s Office is investigating Reina, saying he didn’t want to compromise the investigation.
Sacramento State spokesman Brian Blomster said Tuesday the university has no comment.
Reina did not respond immediately respond to multiple requests for comment Tuesday, Wednesday and last week.
CapRadio is an NPR affiliate. The story posted Tuesday by the publication ends with a note stating that no CapRadio corporate officials or executives reviewed the story before it was posted, in accordance with “NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself.”
What did the audit say about Subject #1?
The redacted, 36-page summary of the report posted publicly last week whited out the names of former board members and other individuals, as well as exhibits and attachments referenced in the body of the audit.
But some of its most damning details involved a person referred to as “Subject #1.”
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in unsupported credit card payments, the auditing firm found Automated Clearing House payments to Subject #1 totaling just over $53,000 that were also unsupported. CliftonLarsonAllen said it learned through interviews that “Subject #1 may have been paying themself via ACH” but that Sacramento State “could not locate supporting documentation for these ACH payments.”
The audit report also described Subject #1 as having signed several of the contracts and purchase agreements linked to possible conflicts of interest on the part of former board members.
The audit indicated that CapRadio’s board approved a contract with a business after being told by Subject #1 that the contract went through a competitive bid process, but that based on interviews conducted by Sacramento State representatives and other documents, “that bid process never occurred.”
The audit also said that CliftonLarsonAllen through interviews “learned that Subject #1 may have had personal credit cards paid by CPR.”
A footnote within the report also said that an “American Express card in the name of Subject #1 was determined to not be a legitimate CPR card by staff.”
The report indicated that CliftonLarsonAllen contacted Subject #1 multiple times between February and May of this year, and that in the most recent correspondence, the legal counsel for Subject #1 told CLA that the subject “no longer wanted to participate” in an interview with the firm about the reimbursements it had flagged.
Last week’s audit stated that CapRadio’s finance committee at a November 2020 meeting “directed” Subject #1 to pursue the lease signing for 730 I St.
Meeting minutes provided to The Bee state: “The committee directed Jun to pursue signing the downtown lease and revisit purchase options later.”
Reina signed the lease March 1, 2021, according to the document reviewed by The Bee. The accounting firm’s audit did not specify the date the lease was signed, but a separate audit released last year by the California State University system into CapRadio’s finances said it was signed March 1, 2021.
The CliftonLarsonAllen audit also referenced Subject #1 as having “caused CPR to take out loans for the furniture” that CapRadio planned to use at its new headquarters. Last year’s audit by CSU said that furniture loans “were signed by the executive vice president and GM” — Reina’s roles at the time, as CapRadio reported Tuesday — “who did not have written delegation of authority from the Board.”
Reina’s signature also appears on a 63-page purchase agreement with Western Contract, which in May 2022 entered into a $992,240 contract with CapRadio for furniture. The date and description of the purchase agreement, also provided to The Bee in response to a Public Records Act request, match those included in the audit.
Reina joined CapRadio in 2007, serving as its chief financial officer for four years, according to his biography published on CapRadio’s website.
He was promoted to two roles in 2012: chief operating officer and chief financial officer, according to his biography.
Audit temporarily removed by Sac State
Sac State on the evening of Aug. 8 removed the audit from its website, saying CliftonLarsonAllen was “making corrections and clarifications” to the examination and that an updated version with those changes would be uploaded “as soon as it is available.”
The audit had not been reposted to the university website as of 4 p.m. Friday, more than a week later. CliftonLarsonAllen has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
The Sacramento Bee on Aug. 7 published a story identifying five former CapRadio board members the audit said had been involved in “possible conflicts of interest.” CapRadio’s story Tuesday did not identify the former board members.
Sacramento State spokesman Blomster in a statement to The Bee on Aug. 7 said the audit had been temporarily taken off the website because one of the five “was not a member of CapRadio’s Board of Directors at the time of the transaction in question, as was initially stated in the CLA report.”
The examination released last week came after a separate audit last year identified widespread concerns including poor recordkeeping and a lack of oversight at the station. It found CapRadio was more than $1.8 million behind on payments it said it would make to Sac State and that it did not have proper board approval for more than $1.1 million in lease agreements for studio equipment and furniture.
This story was originally published August 15, 2024 at 11:25 AM.
