WHERE HAS ALL THE MONEY GONE?
Sierra Leone: President illegally suspends audit officials amidst controversy over presidential travel expenses and other financial irregularities
By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, Matthew Anderson, and Mark Feldman
Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio has indefinitely suspended two of the most senior members of the country’s national auditing agency. Auditor general, Madam Lara Taylor-Pearce and her deputy, Tamba Momoh, were indefinitely suspended from office on Thursday morning. No official reasons were given by the President's Office for the decision, which many in Sierra Leone, have described as unprecedented.
Civil society organizations and pro-democracy activists in Sierra Leone have fully condemned the decision, describing the Presidential action as a "constitutional violation and a move to hamper transparency and accountability in public finance management."
Africanist Press learned that the President’s decision to suspend the two leading audit officials came after the auditing agency had highlighted financial and procurement irregularities while auditing details of the President's travel expenditures and procurement activities of the Office of the First Lady for FY2020. Audit officials reportedly discovered that the President’s Office had submitted several forged documents, including fake hotel receipts and invoices to the Audit Service as part of the president's travel expenditures for FY2020. In management queries sent to the President's Office in early October 2021, audit officials noted that several documents submitted by the President's Office to justify travel expenses in FY2020, including lists of per diems, and details of alleged procurement-related activities by the President and his delegation while traveling abroad were verified to be false. The submitted receipts and invoices included alleged payments in various amounts ranging from US$50,000 to US$75,000 and US$120,000 paid to hotels in South Africa, Lebanon, Gabon, the United Kingdom, and Ethiopia. Auditors reportedly presented the invoices and receipts to the hotels for audit verification which the hotels denied to have issued. The management of a hotel in South Africa is reportedly considering litigation for the forged receipts, while another hotel claims that incidental expenses incurred by the presidential delegation still remained unpaid.
Apart from the falsified hotel receipts, the audit officials also questioned the amounts and procedures used to withdraw per diem and other funds by the Presidential delegation, including cash withdrawn for alleged medical expenses in Lebanon in August 2020. In the case of the Lebanon trip, auditors found that the President's Office underreported the total of funds withdrawn from the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) in the name of the President as per diem and for medical expenses.
Expenditure documents submitted by the President's Office claimed that the President withdrew only US$125,000 from the Local and Overseas Travel Account in August 2020 for medical expenses in Lebanon. However, the FY2020 Statement of the President's travel account show that President Bio and his wife, Fatima Bio, withdrew more than Le10 billion (over US$1 million) for the Lebanon trip in August of 2020. Bank records show that between August 26, and September 30, 2020 alone, President Bio withdrew a cumulative Le10,117,531,840.00 (over US$1 million) from the Local and Overseas Travel Account for the supposed emergency trip to Lebanon. The amounts in question comprised an aggregate total of Le7,586,450,552.00 (over US$758,000) allegedly spent on fees paid to a private air charter, alleged payment for the president’s medical bill, and daily subsistence allowances (DSA) for the First Lady Fatima Bio, and other members of the delegation. Auditors questioned the procedures used to withdraw the said funds and they asked why the payments were not made by bank transfer instead of a cash withdrawal. The President's Office provided no documents showing evidence of payment of medical expenses. Officials in the President's Office were also unable to justify the discrepancy between the US$125,000 amount they submitted in withdrawal documents and the amounts in bank statements showing that over US$500,000 cash was taken out in cash by the President for medical expenses ahead of his Lebanon trip.
The management queries to the Office of the President also questioned the indiscriminate cash withdrawals, often in foreign currencies, carried out in the name of the President and his wife between 10 January 2020, and 11 December 2020. Auditors noted seven specific large cash withdrawals that were carried out in the name of Madam Bio, all totaling Le1,847,601,064 (over US$180,000). These specific transactions included two withdrawals on 10 January 2020, of Le322,083,000 (over US$32,000) and Le71,013,453 (over US$7,000) for the First Lady while accompanying the President on a trip to the UK, and a further amount of Le276,949,376 (over US$27,000) also withdrawn on January 30, 2020, for a trip to Ethiopia with the President. These cash withdrawals were separate from similar amounts simultaneously withdrawn in the name of the President on the same dates from the Local and Overseas Travel account at BSL for these trips. On 10 January 2020, for example, three cash withdrawal transactions in the amounts of Le272,347,976 (over US$27,000), Le644,166,000 (over US$64,000), and Le649,457,300 (about US$65,000) were accessed in the name of the President for expenditures ahead of the UK and Ethiopia trips. Thus, on 10 January 2020 alone, the aggregate cash withdrawn by the president and his wife amounted to Le2,019,912,730 (over US$200,000). Auditors demanded evidence of expenses for the said funds, including retirement details for funds that were not spent. The Office of the President could also not provide supporting documents to justify the said expenditure, instead they argued that details of the President's medical and other expenses and other related documentation could not be fully disclosed because it constitutes national security information.
In addition to these financial irregularities, auditors also found that the wife of the president, First Lady Fatima Jabbe Bio did not comply with procurement procedures when dispensing funds allocated to her office in FY2020. Auditors reported that alleged procurement activities of the Office of the First Lady were not preceded by open competitive bids and were mostly done in violation of the procurement laws of the country. Audit officials also reportedly questioned the procedures allegedly used by finance ministry officials to cancel the domestic debt amounting to over Le24 billion owed by a local construction company affiliated with the president and his wife.
Africanist Press discovered that auditor general Lara Taylor-Pearce and deputy Tamba Momoh had incurred the wrath of the President by insisting on including the audit findings on the president's travel expenditure and details of the irregularities relating to the First Lady's Office in the FY2020 Audit Report.
"The President has directed that these details be removed from the draft report before its publication," officials in the President's Office noted in their management response in late October 2021.
Sierra Leone’s Audit Service is the country’s supreme auditing agency mandated to carry out specialized audits on the use of public finances by government ministries, agencies, and departments. Section 119 of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone empowers the Auditor General to undertake periodic audits into the public accounts of the government of Sierra Leone and of all other public offices set-up wholly or partly by public funds, including the Office of the President, the courts, and other public institutions.
Section 15 of the Audit Service Act of 2014 provides that “the Auditor-General shall act independently in the exercise of his duties under Section 119 of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone and shall not be subject to the direction or control of any person or authority.”
Lawyers in Sierra Leone argue that the president’s decision to suspend the Auditor General and his instruction to institute a tribunal violated both the 1991 Sierra Leone Constitution and the 2014 Audit Service Act.
“Section 35(1) of the Audit Service Act 2014 provides that no criminal or civil proceedings shall lie against the Auditor-General, for anything done in good faith in the course of the performance of his functions under this Act,” they said.
While arguments over the constitutionality of the auditor general’s suspension have continued, transparency concerns have also been raised with many questioning the president’s commitment to fighting graft and endemic public corruption.
President Bio was elected on a promise to enforce fiscal discipline, and reduce waste and graft in public spending, including reductions in foreign travel by public officials.
“My government will develop and introduce a standardized overseas travel policy for the public service and covering all categories of workers, including government ministers as part of additional expenditure control measures,” President Bio announced in Parliament on May 10, 2018, during his state opening address.
An internal memo dated August 1, 2019, from the Office of the President addressed to all heads of government ministries, agencies, and departments announced a temporary freeze on overseas travel by public officials.
“The President has directed that with immediate effect all ministers, ministers of state, deputy ministers and all other public servants should not embark on official overseas trips, except for statutory engagements, until further notice. Participation at statutory meetings must be cleared with His Excellency the President on the submission of concurrence for the use of public funds,” wrote Secretary to the President Julius Sandy on August 1, 2019.
However, despite these public pronouncements and promises, President Bio and his wife spent much of the his nearly four years in office making frequent trips to Europe and Asia, drawing public criticism on the purposes and significance of these travels. Critics of the President say the number of overseas trips is now over 100, a record that exceeds any sitting president of Sierra Leone since the end of the country’s civil war in 2002.
Towards the end of 2019, however, Jacob Jusu Saffa – Bio’s former finance minister – proposed a new legislative provision to grant President Bio unregulated access to travel money.
The Finance Ministry’s Finance Amendment Act of 2020 called for an amendment to Section 65 of the 2016 Public Financial Management Act, which is the law that regulates government travel expenditure. The amendment substituted the law with a new provision that would have allowed Bio unregulated access to travel money.
Section 42 of the proposed 2020 Finance Act requested Parliament to approve the new legislative provision for non-accountable use of travel funds by the President and his deputy for all international travels. The proposed law specifically provides in Section 42(5) for “non-accountable imprest to be provided for daily international travel expenses, excluding purchase of tickets incurred by the President and Vice President.”
Parliament initially passed the proposed legislation into law in late November 2019, but in early December 2019, Parliamentarians voted again to remove the legislation from the 2020 Finance Act due to public pressure. The law had given the President, and two of his top officials – the Vice President and Speaker of Parliament – open cheques to use public funds when on overseas travel.
However, an Africanist Press investigation in early January 2021 discovered that President Bio and his wife collectively withdrew a total of over Le30 billion Leones (more than US$3 million) from the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) for alleged travel expenses in fiscal year 2020 alone, despite bans on international travel due to the coronavirus pandemic.
We have published on the Africanist Press website the FY2020 Bank Statement showing evidence of all withdrawals for travel expenses, including per diems, alleged payments for tickets, and other cash withdrawals for the reported transactions that were the subject of the audit. For more information, see: https://africanistpress.com/2021/11/15/sierra-leone-president-illegally-suspends-audit-officials-amidst-controversy-over-presidential-travel-expenses-and-other-financial-irregularities/
https://africanistpress.com/category/breaking-news/
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FOCUS ON SIERRA LEONE:13 November 2021
My thinking on the suspension of the auditor general.
Here is my story.It is not the government's story. They have access to all the media inside and outside of Sierra Leone to put their own story across.
I will start by saying : If this auditor general publishes and defend her audit report in that form, it will be extremely damaging to the government.
So what do we do? Let us don't announce her summary sacking for now but we should put her on an indefinite suspension and wait to see her reaction and that of the public. Ah! but if we suspend her alone ,leaving her deputy to take charge, he will be effectively acting and having the administrative authority to defend the report.
So what do we do to preempt this ? We need to thwart the process and disrupt the existing high command of the audit department. When both the auditor general and the deputy are dislocate through indefinite suspension their report will then remain in abeyance.
But we need to find a reason, because no government has acted in this way before against the holder of the office of the auditor general.
However fictitious the reasons might be, they may have the effect to distract public attention on the damning report against our government .
The highly respected auditor general, Mrs Lara Taylor Pearce has been in the job for over ten years during which she had exposed, with no compromise, the massive corruption and fiscal indiscipline in the APC administration of president Koroma. Her report specifically highlighted the missing 14 million dollars Ebola funds and other fraudulent financial spendings without the perpetrators either following proper procurement rules or accounted for the missing funds.
The Bio administration fast moving to the end of its 5 years mandate has questioned the auditor General's credibility by suspending the auditor general and placed her under their investigation just days before she was due to release her report,which implicated the president, his wife ,the finance ministry and other government officials for massive misuse and unaccounted for public funds runing into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Where is Sierra Leone heading to. I thought the APC was the "most corrupt and incompetent."administration. Indeed I wrote and published this whilst the party was in power.
But based on my reading of situations in Sierra Leone under the so call "new direction "all hopes to build our economy and strive for a cohesive and just society are dashed.
Disgusting high level corruption is swirling around the corridors of power in Sierra Leone.
Living under the paopas is becoming an unbelievable nightmare, for me personally.
I am not dissapointed, however, for I expected this mess and warned against the paopa militant faction, led by Bio taken over the SLPP leadership.
I am genuinely sorry for some of the brilliant minds and technocrates who have left their careers to return home and serve their country under this paopa administration.
Yankuba G Kai-Samba is a former SLPP UK secretary general under president Kabba's one nation SLPP government.
Chelmsford-UK
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*WHAT’S IN THAT REPORT?*
*That’s all we want to know now…
*By Dr. Dennis Bright*
*Chairman and Leader, NGC*
Since news of the sacking or “indefinite suspension” of the Auditor General broke out, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I was especially asking myself questions such as: why would President Bio want to sack this woman at a time when the dust of the European Union’s frank and damning report has still not settled, when people are still angry about his lackluster performance at the climate conference and all that?
But thanks to the Africanist Press, whose reports have never been challenged by the Government, we now know that the 2020 Audit Report, when it is released as prepared by Lara Taylor Pearce may reveal misdeeds, malpractices and fraudulent activities in very high places that are unheard of in the sixty years history of independent Sierra Leone.
One thing we must make clear is this: anything they tell us now that does not have to do with what is in that report is a mere distraction; we don’t want to know all the things they are telling us now about this woman, that she did a cover up for the Mayor or she did not follow the procurement rules or that maybe she stole a potato at the Freetown Supermarket. You had enough time to tell us all that, but you didn’t. Now, what the nation is interested in is what is in that report that you do not want us to hear and that made you send her away? We don’t want any distractions. You cannot just come up with a tribunal to investigate the good lady just two weeks before she was going to expose your “egregious” corruption, as the former Chief Minister would call it. What’s done in the darkness must come to light.
I would like to inform my compatriots in Government that this Lara Taylor Pearce story is not going to blow over. This is not going to be shelved like the case of the 49,000 bags of Chinese donated rice that disappeared within the Government, stolen or “commandeered.” If you think that the Christmas fever is going to make this go cold, please start thinking again. We will hear that Audit Report, unfiltered and unadulterated. And if you think you can just sack that woman when you have no right to, let’s see if the Constitution of this country has now become your tissue paper. I feel so sorry for you all.
And I do hope that Lara will not take the bait and give up, never mind the threats and intimidation. That will be the professional suicide they are hoping for. Be assured, strong lady, the people are behind you because you are the last hope for decency in this s……..hole (courtesy of the former U.S. President Trump). Good is not dead yet and God is alive.
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SLPP DANCING THE TWIST IN THE AUDITOR GENERAL MRS LARA TAYLOR-PEARCE IMMEDIATE INDEFINITE SUSPENSION SAGA!
🌴*SLPP Regime is Mute as BBC Umaru Fofana conflicts with Lara Taylor-Pearce version on "Indefinite Suspension" Letter*
By Awareness Times.
As the SLPP-led Government continues to keep mute on the highly topical issue, the news of Auditor General Mrs. Lara Taylor-Pearce receiving a Letter addressed to her from Office of the President and informing her that she has been sent on an "indefinite" suspension, is now proving to be quite dubious and mischievous.
The now-impugned news was reported on by BBC's Umaru Fofana but in a short statement issued by Taylor-Pearce herself, she says nothing like that. Instead, she gives a conflicting version informing that what she has seen is not a suspension letter addressed to her but rather a letter from H.E. President Bio's Secretary that was addressed to the Chairman of the Audit Service Board. The Board is the supervising entity of the Audit Service.
Clearly from her written words, the Auditor General has not received any Letter sending her on suspension yet.
"She is going to be suspended but she has not yet been suspended so the news saying otherwise is very misleading and a clear case of ill-bred, alarmist journalism," wrote Professor Karim Jalloh, an accounting lecturer staying in the United States.
However, it is a fact that there may indeed be ongoing plans to have Taylor-Pearce sent on suspension. A leaked letter from the Deputy Minister of Justice to the Chief Justice speaks to that.
All indications are that a Tribunal is now being set up to investigate what the Deputy Minister of Justice describes in the leaked letter as "several allegations in form of complaints" that "have been lodged to His Excellency the President against the Auditor General Mrs. Lara Taylor-Pearce and her Deputy Mr. Tamba Momoh amounting to misconduct or lack of professional performance whilst in office".
Meanwhile, the precise words of Lara Taylor-Pearce as issued on social media on Friday 12th November 2021 does not say she has received a suspension letter.
"I can confirm that I was handed a letter signed by the Secretary to the President to the Chairman of the ASSL Advisory Board, stating that the Attorney General has been asked to set up a tribunal to look into the ASSL for professional performance or the lack thereof. Further that myself and Mr Tamba Momoh, my deputy should be sent on suspension with immediate effect," Taylor-Pearce wrote.
Whilst the Audit Service Board is fully empowered to send Deputy Auditor General Tamba Momoh and any other Deputy Auditor General on suspension, it is a fact that the suspension of the Auditor General can only be done by the President himself.
END.
©️ *Awareness Times Newspaper*
Monday November 15th 2021
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