By Amin Kef Sesay
In what could be described as a denial of a report published by Africanist Press that the Chief Minister spent over Le34 billion in less than three years, a press statement dated 16th February, 2021 from the Office of the Chief Minister states: “The baseless allegation by Chernoh Bah and his so-called Africanist Press alleging that over Le 34.2 billion (more than US$3.4 million) has been spent on media consultancies and travel per diem in less than three years,” is not true.
The release adds that “All funds allocated have gone through the Ministry of Finance’s normal budgetary processes, ratified by Parliament and allocated to all the respective Agencies, Commissions and Units within the Office of the Chief Minister, which are verifiably and credibly accounted for through the normal internal and external audit processes and mechanisms. It is therefore important to clarify that the OCM is not a single unit as claimed by Chernoh Bah and his ill-informed Africanist Press.”
According to the release: “Additionally, all procurements undertaken by the Officer of the Chief Minister were done in accordance with the Procurement Act of 2016. This has been confirmed by the NPPA,” adding that, “the claim by Chernoh Bah and his Africanist Press that the OCM breached procurement procedures is false and calculated to tarnish the good image of the New Direction Government.”
The press release was signed by the Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Chief Minister.
However, in the Africanist Press report authored by Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, Matthew Anderson, and Mark Feldman, they stated among other things that: “Financial records obtained by the Africanist Press show how the Office of the Chief Minister of Sierra Leone spent over Le34.2 billion Leones (more than US$3.4 million) in less than three years despite the fact that President Bio was elected into office under the guise of ending the corrupt practices of his predecessor,. This money was spent on travel per diems (expenses listed do not include airfares) and for procurement of goods and services that did not undergo an official competitive bidding process with open requests.
The Chief Minister’s Office’s financial records indicate that several wire transfers of hundreds of millions of Leones were sent to foreign media agencies and technology companies in Europe, China, and the United States. These transfers were purportedly for consultancy services, public relations operations, and information technology products. None of these services or products were ever advertised or put on an open bid. Records of these large monetary transactions and wire transfer payments reveal that these transactions were non-compliant with Sierra Leone’s public finance laws and the public procurement regulations.
It adds that: “Evidence obtained by the Africanist Press shows that procurements for goods and services were mostly undertaken on an ad hoc basis and in ways that openly violated public procurement regulations. These procurements included, for example, a total of Le1,876,061,250 (about US$185,000) that was paid directly during the last quarter of 2018 to Salman Motors in Freetown.
These funds included the alleged purchase of three Toyota Land Cruiser Prado vehicles for the newly established Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI). We found no evidence in the records of the Office of the Chief Minister to indicate that Salman Motors was awarded the said procurement contract from an open bidding process. In fact, the evidence we reviewed shows that an unusually high advance payment (transaction ID FT1833061004) of Le 1,200,000,000 (about US$120,000) – more than 70% of the contract value – was made to Salman Motors on November 26, 2018, ahead of the supply of the three vehicles that were supposedly purchased for DSTI staff. Apart from the lack of evidence of a bidding and tender process, there is also no evidence that an advertisement notice inviting other suppliers to compete for this contract was ever made by the Chief Minister’s Office.
Evidence shows that the remaining balance of Le223,878,750 (about US$22,000) (FT1833849422) was paid on December 4, 2018, to Salman Motors to complete the payment of more than Le1.4 billion spent on the purchase of the DSTI Prado vehicles. We have found no evidence that the vendor actually delivered all of the three vehicles that were paid for. Moreover, the 1.2 billion Leones in payments to Salman Motors do not include two earlier payments (FT1829170875 and FT1829709495) of Le200,000,000 (about US$20,000) and Le252,182,500 (about US$25,000) made on October 18, 2018, and October 24, 2018, respectively, for unstated purposes. In fact, there is no records to indicate the purposes of the other earlier combined payments totalling Le452,182,500 ($44,288) made to Salman Motors by the Chief Minister’s Office.
“We report that, for the most part, a split invoicing process indicates a deliberate pattern of payments used to avoid the required thresholds of Le60,000,000 and to justify the lack of competitive bidding. For example, we found evidence of transactions conducted on December 27, 2018, where multiple wire transfers of smaller payments ranging between Le15,120,000 (about US$1500) and Le49,896,000 (about US$4000), all totalling Le137,035,000 (about US$13,700) were made on a single business day to a company listed as Index Enterprises.
Our investigation reveals that Index Enterprises is a US-based real estate company located in California. There are no clearly specified purposes for which these payments were made to Index Enterprises. There was also no clear indication whether the listed Index Enterprises, we tracked, was the actual company that was repeatedly receiving these wired transferred amounts.
“We found a similar pattern of SWIFT wire transactions to a Washington-based technology company, IMO Tech Solutions LLC, for consultancy services. An outgoing SWIFT payment (FT1835466631) on December 20, 2018, of Le171,538,184.42 (about US$1700) and on December 21, 2018 (FTT1835550645), of Le65,142,803.60 (about US$6300) were sent to IMO Tech Solutions LLC without any evidence of an open bid or tender.
“Documents we reviewed also show that a total of Le3,330,412,548.33 (about US$326,000) was spent on travel per diems (amounts listed do not include airfare) between August and December 2018 alone, in the first four months after the appointment of David Francis as the Chief Minister. These travel per diems included Le47,011,133.04 (US$5662) paid to David Sengeh as per diem allowance to attend the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting on September 21, 2018; another Le72,455,595.25 (US$8,675) (TT1828440049) also paid on October 11, 2018, to David Sengeh and Donald Kopoi for an official travel to the USA to the World Frontier Forum; a Le18,992,162.00 (US$2250) paid to Dr. John Tambi as per diem for participation at the African Infrastructural Conference, a further payment of Le30,089,880 (US$3552) again to David Sengeh, and another payment of Le 44,253,810 (US$5224) (TT1832009428) made on November 16, 2018, to Joe Lahai Somana as travel per diem on official visit to the Hunan Gold and International Investment Limited Company in China.
The report added, “Thus, we conclude that well-documented evidence on the financial operations of the Chief Minister’s Office obtained by the Africanist Press shows that the total expenditure of Le34,290,264,178.23 (about US$3.4 million) in the two-and-a-half years of the Bio administration were used primarily on travel and media and IT consultancy services, mostly paid to media and data processing firms in Europe and the USA.”
Meanwhile, the Africanist Press claims to have published on its website documentary evidence showing the expenditure details of the Office of the Chief Minister. For more information see, https://africanistpress.com/2021/02/14/sierra-leone-chief-ministers-office-spent-over-le34-billion-on-media-consultancies-and-travel-per-diem-in-less-than-three-years/
