The president of the company at the center of a controversy swirling around the operation of the Digby port told its side of the story Thursday.

Ralston MacDonnell says his firm's reputation has been hurt by allegations there wasn't proper scrutiny of federal monies allocated to run the port of Digby.

MacDonnell is the president of a company hired by a non-profit groupy in Digby to operate the port.

His firm has received $2 million of taxpayers money through a management contract which MacDonell says doesn't require his company to itemize or account for what it spends to anyone.

"The contract was a lump sum contract," MacDonnell explained to reporters. "What we spent on any one service or component was our affair."

In fact, MacDonnell says the only "books" he showed the non-profit society, dealt with their own salaries.

Conservative critic Bill Casey has been pushing Transport Canada to change that.

See related story: Allegations of corruption in Digby wharf privatization

At the same time MacDonnell's company was hired to manage the port, he put members of the society on the payroll at a cost of $250,000 each over 5 years.

MacDonnell estimates between $300,000 and $500,000 has been spent on physical improvements to the wharf, and he has a warning for Bill Casey, the politician he feels is responsible for his troubles.

"I really caution Mr Casey," MacDonnell warned. "He's created a significant amount of diffculty for our firm and unnecessarily so."

Concerns raised by an audit about possible ineligible expenditures prompted Ottawa to ask a court to cut off future cheques to the company running the port.

MacDonell says Transport Canada's allegations that the company set-up a management contract to evade scrutiny by Ottawa are unfounded.