Auditor-General accuses members for aiding corruption

The Auditor-General, Mr. Daniel Domelevo, is blaming professional auditors for contributing to some challenges confronting the auditing and accountancy profession in the country.

He said the ongoing indiscipline with regard to corruption in the public and private sector can only be addressed when professional auditors speak to issues on public and private sector corruption.

Reluctance to comment

“Professionals like myself and others in the profession have looked away for too long for the wrong things to be done. As a professional body, topical issues on auditing and accountancy arise in this country and we best understand such issues, but all we do is to shut up,” Mr. Domelevo told the Goldstreet Business during a public lecture organized by the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana (ICAG) in Accra.

The Lecture

The lecture, which was on the theme, ‘Implementation of Auditor General’s Reports: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects So Far’, also highlighted on how professional auditors and accountants have compromised their positions and authorities due to intimidations from their bosses.

The indiscipline, Mr. Domelevo said, will continue as long as auditors and accountants allow themselves to be intimidated.

“Even as a professional body, we refuse to issue statements on relevant national issues which falls in the domain of the profession and we have allowed people who know next to nothing in auditing and accounting to rather pontificate”, he indicated.

The need to speak up

He said it is prudent to issue statements and be vilified than to keep quiet and allow things to slip, adding; “let’s issue public statements in favour or in disfavour of national issues no matter how the issues may be. It is the only way people will be begin to take us serious.”

Mr. Domelevo said, Ghana’s mantra of ‘private sector is the engine of growth’, seems to be taking the country nowhere, as corruption has become the bane of both public and private sectors.

“How can a car function well with a dirty oil in its engine? The oil in the private sector’s engine is dirty not to talk that of the public sector,” he added.

ICAG President

ICAG’s President, Mr. Kwame Adom-Frimpong noted that auditors and accountants have the responsibility to influence national progress due to the sensitive nature of their positions.

“If the books and figures doesn’t tally and the auditor and the accountant decides to tally it dishonestly, then the profession could become a curse to national development,” he said.