Top University of Houston administrators feigned ignorance of an agreement tied to a fee increase that students agreed to pay to help fund the new football stadium, according to an internal audit presented to regents Thursday.

The audit concluded that managers in the Division of Administration and Finance - long led by Carl Carlucci, who stepped down last month - were not always forthcoming about their knowledge of their end of that agreement.

The findings support student claims that administrators ignored their responsibility to students and mismanaged the construction of the stadium, which ran millions of dollars over budget.

A previous audit found that the process of hiring a company to run and book stadium events was "compromised" because officials didn't provide all relevant information when they sought proposals.

The latest findings were presented publicly to regents after UH auditor Don Guyton addressed them in a closed session. Regents did not discuss the audit in public session.

The audit found that unspecified officials in the Division of Administration and Finance, led by Carlucci, told student leaders they were unaware of the agreement even though emails showed otherwise. Students had agreed to pay $45 per semester for 25 years to support the stadium project.

In a June 27, 2014, email, Emily Messa, the vice president for administration and finance, told former student government president Charles Haston that she was not aware of the agreement. She added: "It sounds like an arrangement you have with Athletics." When Haston emailed former athletic director Mack Rhoades about the issue, Rhoades forwarded the email to another official in the athletics department asking if that person remembered any discussion with Messa about the agreement.

Emails offer proof

"The University including Carl (Carlucci) were very aware of the MOU," Rhoades wrote. The Houston Chronicle obtained the emails through an open records request.

Carlucci did not respond to a request for comment late Thursday. Replying on Carlucci's behalf, a UH spokesman said the administration and finance division "posts volumes of information on its public website in the spirit of transparency."

The department was responsible for several parts of the agreement with students, including a requirement to provide incentives for vendors to hire students and an understanding that students could use the stadium twice a year for free, students contend.

The agreement in question has since been revised and is being upheld by the university, the audit found.

The university acknowledged in a statement Thursday that the audit "revealed some issues that need attention and those are being addressed," but it said the auditors' findings had nothing to do with Carlucci stepping down from his position at the head of Administration and Finance.

The university announced last month that Carlucci, who had been vice chancellor and vice president for administration and finance for seven years, was stepping down but will remain at UH as a faculty member in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

Not all confirmed

"Dr. Carlucci's return to the faculty resulted from discussions he initiated more than a year ago and are not connected to the audit," the statement said.

The latest audit did not confirm all of the students' claims.

It says that Haston - who led the charge against Carlucci that culminated in a rare vote of no confidence in the former top administrator - "may have intended to intimidate" the head of a group of students and faculty tasked with monitoring how student fees are used.

The audit says Haston posted a message calling the leader of the committee "spineless" after the committee chose not to include a section critical of the administration in a report.

Haston said that finding is "nothing more than a senseless attack on a student to divert attention away from the very real issues at hand."

"I would never have had to take the drastic steps I took to protect the student body's investment had internal audit done their job in the first place," Haston said. "What does it say about them when the student body president is the one who uncovered the malfeasance perpetrated by Carlucci?"