Only 25% of fraud, financial malfeasance in Ghana captured in AG's report - Tax Expert

A tax expert, Mr. Cudjoe Akpabey has stated in an interview with Rainbow Radio 87.5Fm that, the happenings of mismanagement and financial misappropriation that is captured by the Auditor General’s Report annually, is only 25% of the actual monies that goes down the drain.

The Auditor General he posited does selective auditing and should they be doing what is really required of them, Ghanaians will be shocked at the outcome adding, ‘’this is only a tip of the iceberg’’.

He was responding to the $41 million bauxite export not captured in the Central Bank’s report.

This came to light when officials of the bank, appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Tuesday April 25th, 2017- which is considering the report of the Auditor General on the statement of foreign exchange receipts payable to the Bank of Ghana for the half year ended June 30, 2015, and December 31, 2015.

The committee was unhappy with the failure of the Central Bank to capture a transaction involving the export of more than 40,000 tonnes of bauxite by the Ghana Export Company Limited in its audited accounts for 2015.

The committee, chaired by Mr James Klutse Avedzi, consequently directed the central bank to furnish the PAC with the report today as it began sittings to scrutinise the audited accounts of some state institutions for the 2015 fiscal year.

Mr. Akpabey quoted the PPA’s Act 2003, Act 663 which states that: ‘’ (1) The Auditor-General shall conduct annual audits of the procurement activities of entities and shall furnish copies of reports on the audits to the Board upon request from the Board; (2) The Auditor-General shall also carry out specific audits into the procurement activities of entities and compliance by contractors, suppliers and consultants with the procurement requirements in this Act and regulations made under this Act at the request of the Board.’’

The tax expert added, ‘’the Auditor General has never ever done this…If the Auditor General has been carrying out this specific order, this thing should have been reconciled long ago. So there is some negligence somewhere at the Auditor Generals Department- as to the reason why, I don’t know, because this should have been captured long ago.... The Auditor General have powers to carry out specific audits in all these areas…This one is not a surprise to me; there are many volumes of fraudulent and dubious transactions that have not been captured in the Auditor General’s report. The report we have been reading is just about 25% of the malfeasance and the fraud that is happening in the country. So I am not surprised. Those that you see in the report is just a small portion of what we see happening in this country,’’ he concluded.