March 22, 2021
The issue revolving around Audit Service Sierra Leone is not over. A-Z Newspaper has unearthed more details bordering on trust and integrity in the operations of the Authority over the years.
The worst thing that has happened to Sierra Leone is the continuous and blatant violation of transparency and accountability laws of the state by supreme Auditor Genera, Lara Taylor-Pearce, who many sierra Leoneans had perceived to be highly credible.
While it has become crystal clear that she deliberately and manipulatively relied on unlawful opinions to violate both the Financial Management Act 2016 and the Fiscal Management and Responsibility Act 2017, she equally violated, with impunity the National Public Procurement Act 2016.
A-Z has gathered that in covering these blatant violations, a group of chartered accountants who benefit from the arbitrary appointments to conduct audit of government agencies are putting pressure on the Association of Chartered Accountants in Sierra Leone to publish the list of registered audit firms in Sierra Leone.
Main pushers are mushroom audit firms such as LKG and PAJ who are evidently accused and have audited Audit Service Sierra Leone for 4 years. The facts remain that LKG, being in partnership with PAJ resident in London, have audited ASSL for 4 consecutive years and that LKG tax records at NRA show that they only paid Le765,000 tax for 2018 while they received Le86.0 million from ASSL as audit fees and over Le250.0 million in audit fees for 17 community banks.
PAJ has no tax records at the registry neither at NRA. It seems ICASL doesn’t care about compliance but once an individual pays the annual fees they are recognized. Also, the Auditor General awards hefty audit contracts annually to these mushroom audit firms without following any procurement procedures in violation of the National Public Procurement law of 2016.
Like in the case of violations of the FMCA 2017, Madam Auditor General is now caught in violating another law where ASSL is not exempted on how to award audit contracts.
As the Deputy Auditor General, Selvin Bell said on 98.1FM Gud Morning Salone program on Thursday, 18 March 2021, ASSL uses audit fees to pay private audit firms to help them audit. That said, the Dep AG, never explained to the public whether the hiring of the private audit firms follow Procurement procedures or not.
But documents obtained by the Africanist Press leaked to the Eagle Media reveals that the Auditor General, since 2015, never followed any competitive process to award audit contracts, except on one occasion.
A leaked National Public Procurement Authority Memo (another independent entity) shared by the infamous Africanist Press authored by Chernor Bah has confirmed that the Auditor General has not been following procurement procedures in the appointment of private audit firms in contravention of the Law.
Paragraph (3) of the NPPA independent advise to the Attorney General states thus: “However, we must point out that specifically in relation to the selection and hiring of audit firms to undertake audit services for and on behalf of ASSL, our records did not show any proof that the ASSL employed any accepted procurement processes such as approval by procurement committee [of ASSL] to embark on the method of selecting sole consultant as stipulated in subsection (2) of Section 48 of the Public Procurement Act 2016 or notification for the holding of the procurement process as stipulated in subsection (2) of section 47 of the Public Procurement Act 2016.
The independent advised issued by the competent Authority, NPPA further states that in paragraph (4) “we therefore took it one step further and conducted a review of our annual assessment reports which again confirmed the above facts stated in paragraph (3) above.
It is now evidently clear that such alarming revelation confirms that the Surpeme Auditor of Sierra Leone is nor respect of the laws and does not have the pedigree of a person required to examine the financial transactions of a poor.
The question many are asking is: why is the supreme Auditor General, auditor of auditors, manipulating the laws, yet indicting public servants as well as private business persons for non-compliance with the same laws that she’s violating?
Political observers say the Auditor General should just do the right thing to explain whether in the exercise of her duties she is above the laws of transparency and accountability or must resign! That institution’s credibility is in dragged in the ditch and needs a bulldozer auditor to bring it back on the credibility track.