Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 05, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The reports of the ‘forensic’ audits are out. They are being made public on the website of the Ministry of Finance. The publication of these audits suggest that charges are not likely to be laid against anyone since it is unlikely that having made the reports public that the matter will be handed over to the police.
The public can judge for themselves whether these audits achieved the purposes for which they were intended and whether technically they can be considered as forensic audits
The public is more interested in knowing whether money was stolen, who stole it, where it is and how, if it was stolen, can it be restored to the state. The so-called forensic audits have disappointed many in this area.
The audits so far has not revealed any criminal culpability on the part of anyone. The audits have, however, revealed weaknesses in a number of areas, including management, oversight and procurement procedures.
No one has so far been charged with a corrupt transaction in any of the audits done, except in one instance and this related to payments made to Board members.
The findings of the audits in relation to the operations and the management systems are not unusual in audits. If you go through, for example, the annual reports of the Auditor General in Guyana, you will find that the same sort of things that are being reported in these so-called forensic audits have appeared in the reports of the Auditor General.
It therefore needs to be questioned from a financial point of view why instead of hiring private auditors to undertake the audits, the work as not given to the Office of the Auditor General.
In fact, most of these audits could have been conducted without cost to the government by utilizing the staff of internal audit departments within the government.
A big disappointment with most of the audits is that persons accused of certain things were not given the opportunity to respond to the charges against them. This should have been done both during the course of the investigation and at the end of the audit. In those cases where this did not happen then it could amount to denial of due process.
The Audit Act of Guyana provides for draft audit reports to be submitted to the heads of agencies being audited and for those persons to be allowed thirty days to respond to the findings in the draft report.
It is mandatory for the comments provided to be included in the final report. The Audit Act provides for the right to respond but the audit act is not applicable to private audits and to the auditing of entities not covered by the said Audit Act.
The right to respond seems to have been applied in the case of the audit of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport. This is good. But the same approach was not taken in some other audits whose reports have been made public.
This suggests that different standards may have been employed by different auditing agencies and the government did not see it fit to insist that all the audits conform to one standard.
It would have in most instances have saved a great deal of embarrassment had this approach been used. For one, after the GEA audit, the former Prime Minister of Guyana wrote a letter to the media in which he pointed out that contrary to a claim made in the audit of that agency, one individual was not subject to integrity testing and therefore, could not, as the audit report sought to do, be said to have failed the test yet allowed to continue on the job.
When an error is pointed out in an audit report, it affects the credibility of the audit especially if the error is a major one and can affect a specific finding. This is why it was important that those fingered in the audits should have been afforded the opportunity to respond to the draft findings.
The Head of Guyoil who was sacked just after the so-called forensic audit in to his corporation was made public, wrote a letter to the media in which he responded to the allegations leveled against him in the audit report.
It seems to me that there could be no harm in allowing the head to respond to the allegations against him before the audit report was submitted. The head of GUYOIl came out looking like the victim simply because he was not afforded the right to respond.
The government should do the right thing and remove the audit reports from the Ministry of Finance website until such time as all the agencies and affected persons are afforded the right to respond.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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