Monrovia – Documents obtained by FrontPageAfrica show that Finance and Development Planning Minister, Boima Kamara, in June instructed that monies for audits of the Ministries of Education and Health be paid from fund made available for upgrade the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and Information Technology (IT) Systems of the Government.
Report by Lennart Dodoo – [email protected]
This fund, as appropriate in the FY16/17 National Budget, was intended to upgrade the IT infrastructure for the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) which was placed in service in 2010 and it is believed that the most of the infrastructures are obsolete after six years, and stand the risk of breakdown.
On the heels of that, the Government appropriated funds to upgrade the infrastructure.
To date, nothing has been done in this regard.
However, according to our investigation, monies are being paid for projects that are already covered under separate budgetary allotments, including audits that were already done in previous years.
This investigation has unearthed that USAID did pay for an audit of the Ministry of Health’s payroll as part of the support during Ebola and that audit was performed by the IAA.
Again, information available to this paper seems to suggest that the payroll of the Ministry of Education was also audited by the same IAA in the FY15/16 budget.
It is not clear why the Minister of Finance Development Planning is allocating and reallocating monies to various spending entities outside the project scope especially after he had fired two staff on similar grounds.
The payments were made by Manager checks to pay the IAA for the audit.
This transaction violates the Public Financial Management (PFM) Law.
According to the PFM law, all payments should be routed through the voucher system and paid using legitimate checks.
Even in cases, where money is wired internationally, the proper checks are written so that there can be evidence of the transactions but to issue a manager check is strange and not supported.
The payment outside the budgetary process has also raised some eyebrows.
“What relationship does the payroll audit have with the IFMIS upgrade? Payroll audit is important, but many of them have been done by the same IAA so why risk the IFMIS system to give money to another entity that already has allocation for work it has to cover within the fiscal year,” a source within the ministry rhetorically asked.
But Mr. Kamara who is out of the country reportedly claimed innocence to the allegation.
“As far as I know, I have done nothing wrong. If anybody thinks I am not following the law and allotting to other areas that are not of critical needs, let them bring an auditor to establish that.
In fact, only an audit can establish whether or not I have done anything wrong,” Kamara said.
This paper has also reliably learned that Kamara is planning to allocate additional US$175,000 out of the IFMIS budget to the General Auditing Commission (GAC) to conduct another audit and the paperwork in our possession shows that the internal auditors have raised questions about why the GAC should be paid to conduct an audit since it is part of its mandate and also why not allocate the money through the regular budgetary process?
The spirit and intent of the PFM law according to the act that created it, was basically to establish checks and balances in the allocation, expenditure, and execution of government’s spending.
The law requires that the management of public finances of the Republic of Liberia including the preparation and execution of the National Budget and its supplements are guided by the following principles:
(a) Accountability: The Executive is accountable to the Legislature for the way it carries out its responsibilities with respect to the management of public finances; and within the Executive, all public officials entrusted with public finance responsibilities are accountable to the President of the Republic of Liberia for the proper execution of their duties.
(b) Annual basis, the budget authority is granted by the Legislature for a fiscal year, unless there are exceptions specified in law.
(c) Balanced Budget. In the National Budget, expenditure and financial outflows shall be balanced by revenues and financial inflows, including any new borrowing.
(d) Comprehensiveness. All central government revenues and expenditures shall be included in the National Budget, being recorded on a gross basis.
(e) Specificity. All central government revenues and expenditures shall be presented and executed with the detail specified under this Act and its enabling regulations in the National Budget.
In part 3 section 8 under the budget preparation and approval, all public financial transactions, both revenues, and expenditures, are to be structured and classified using the same classifications for both budgeting and accounting.
The following rules will apply: (a) Where relevant, these classifications shall be designed to meet generally accepted international standards as defined in regulations issued pursuant to this Act.
In the national budget or supplementary appropriations, budgetary classifications may be made for expenditures of a confidential nature. ‘Details of such spending items will be promulgated in the regulations accompanying this Act.’
In Section 35, under General Accounting principles it is required that before any expenditure is made all accounting Rules and Standards for central government should adhere to internationally accepted principles, and are to be applied consistently to all government agencies, including autonomous agencies, as well as local governments or any other subdivisions of Government at the local level, whether in existence or to be established in the future.
In January 2017, the Minister of Finance made claims of financial and administrative malfeasance against two of his staff, and even fired them -Emmanuel Togba and Herbert Sober, Coordinator and Deputy Coordinator for the Reform Coordination Unit (RCU), for what he calls ‘misapplying project fund to unrelated activities.’
During the Minister’s investigation, it was established that Mr. Togba, the Coordinator, and the Comptroller and Accountant General of Liberia (CAG), Mr. Hassan Kiazolu, signed all the checks but the Minister conveniently found a way to leave out Mr., Kiazolu but punished the two lower officers.
It still remains a misery why the Minister recommended no action against the CAG even though everyone knows that it was impossible for any money to be withdrawn without Mr. Kaizolu’s signature and consent.
Information reaching this paper reveals that Mr, Kaizolu had warned the Minister that if he did anything, they would both go down together.
One could easily dismiss this on the first instance but then again, following the occurrence of a similar situation, it seems imperative that something sinister is in the works at MFDP.