By Amin Kef Sesay
Since the patriotic minded, morally upright Auditor General, Lara Taylor-Pearce, took over Audit Service Sierra Leone and started giving the nation a true picture of the abysmal level of financial corruption in the civil service, what year after year during the past decade of her investigations has revealed glaringly in her annual reports is that if anybody should be held accountable for aiding and abetting financial crimes including concealing of information, fraud, theft and misuse of public monies, it is a group of people that go by the nomenclature of Vote Controllers.
From the tough order that the Financial Secretary, Sahr Lahai Jusu gave past Thursday to Vote Controllers to submit their plans for the implementation of the 2019 Audit recommendations, it is clear that these criminals have been flouting the Auditor General’s recommendations with impunity and getting away with it because the Parliamentary Accounts Committee does not seem to have the balls to call them to order.
The Financial Secretary is unforgiving in his censure of Vote Controllers as he warns them that if they fail to, there will be a strong remedial measure which will lead to suspension. Suspension Sir, is not enough for people that knowingly criminally steal public funds for their personal aggrandizement.
Nobody should take offense for this publication calling our Vote Controllers criminals because Sahr Jusu openly declared that the main challenge they at Finance are faced with is that many Vote Controllers and their MDAs do not recognize the audit process and recommendations.
He further blamed Vote Controllers for not treating the Auditor General’s representative seriously as when she sends her audit staff the Vote Controllers send them to someone else.
Issues of compliance to laws, procurement and public financial management formed part of the Emphasis of Matter in the Auditor General’s “Unqualified Opinion” on the 2019 Report.
Cabinet Secretary Mr. John Sumaila, commenting on this very grave criminal matter, implored vote controllers and the leadership of MDAs to come together to consider how to minimize the adverse issues in the Audit Reports.
He encouraged them to improve on the findings and retrieval of documents by cooperating with auditors through the release of records and documentation. “Uphold internal controls established in MDAs to ensure that the business of Government is carried out in an orderly and efficient manner, respond to audit queries and that should be done in addressing issues raised in the audit report, support internal auditors…,” the Cabinet Secretary said.
This Commentary emphasizes on the point that the issue of tightening access and control is especially pertinent in relation to persons who have principal access and control over public funds as they occupy positions in which a high level of public trust is invested and deal with massive sums of money.
Unquestionably, checks/restrictions and control over Vote Controllers access to and expending of public funds are found in the GBAA 2005 and FMR 2007.
These two prudent public financial management documents set out the legal requirements/controls applicable to every phase of the treatment/handling of public funds.
They include their safeguarding, their circulation, their conversion into employable forms and their being fed into the governance process.
The control and management of public funds is determined by and dependent upon the extent to which such controls are expressed, set out, encompassed and instituted by regulatory instruments.
Realistically, control and management is determined by and dependent upon those offices/bodies which the regulatory instruments assign the responsibility of effecting observance of the provisions which bear upon efficient financial management.
Thus, control and management of public funds can be seen as the operation of certain mechanisms/devices, created by such regulatory instruments and at different phases/episodes.
As such, in ensuring effective financial control, what the Auditor General’s annual reports point to is that the existing legal restrictions on accessing and handling public funds were simply not observed.
Why did the designated enforcement body not fulfilling its enforcement role, or, why did the designated device not function?
The answer to this question will lead to the uncovering of other causative factors and the most pertinent circumstances surrounding the commission of the offence of stealing of public monies by Vote Controllers that has gone unchecked all these years leading to its occurrence year after year.
