Supreme Court's orders to Auditor General on 'looted' cash excellent - Apaak

A Member of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Dr. Clement Apaak, has said the Supreme Court’s orders for the Auditor-General will give clarity to the role that the institution can play in terms of surcharging persons implicated in its report.

Dr. Apaak said the relationship between PAC and the Auditor General is direct because the role of PAC is to look at the audited accounts of Ministries, Departments and Agencies as per the budgetary allocations given to them to spend on behalf of the people.

The law he explained requires the Auditor General, to audit these departments’ ministries and agencies, and provide that report to the Speaker of Parliament and when the Speaker receives the report, he assigns it to PAC to scrutinize it, invite people to justify the findings.

He was however quick to add that, the powers of PAC does not allow them to directly initiative prosecution and retrieval of monies from individuals who may have embezzled, misapplied or failed to account for funds.

‘’That is why we are very excited about this development even as we look towards the Speaker also activating processes after we have presented him with our report.’’

The MP said, ‘’Parliament is also looking forward to a review of the constitution to augment the powers of PAC as pertained in the Eastern part of the continent particularly Uganda where PAC can bring in police officers to its hearing and call the immediate arrest of public officials indicted in a report or those who fail to justify any suspected act of embezzlement. So we welcome the outcome of the case by OccupyGhana and we believe it is only going to enhance our work.’’

He lamented over the misuse, misapplication and embezzlement of colossal amount of money as captured in the annual report of the Attorney General, and stressed that the only equation to these actions is to hold indicted persons who use political cover to misappropriate state funds accountable.

The Supreme Court yesterday [Wednesday] ordered the Auditor General to, with immediate effect, begin surcharging persons found to have misappropriated monies belonging to the state.

The order of the court follows a suit filed by pressure group, Occupy Ghana in June 2016, seeking an order directing the Auditor-General to issue disallowances and surcharges to and in respect of all persons and entities found in relevant, successive reports to have engaged in misappropriation of state funds.