Monrovia – The Ministry of Finance and Development Planning is drowning in corruption but the sincerity of efforts being made to rescue the situation is being questioned.
Report by Lennart Dodoo – [email protected]
Finance Minister, Boima Kamara, on Tuesday evening disclosed the discovery of an ‘illegal’ account and transaction in the tone of US$49,000 and L$1.9 million.
At the beginning of February, Min. Kamara announced the involvement of two senior employees at the Ministry identified as Emmanuel Togba and Herbert Sorbor, who allegedly stole US$82,000 out of the US$1million project fund, intended for the update of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), and were given one month to restitute the money, or face justice.
IFMIS is the system through which all money related Government transactions, including the printing of checks, and how the Government does its transactions across its ministries and agencies, take place.
Speaking on the recently discovered ‘illegal account’, Finance Minister Boima Kamara disclosed that the ‘illegal transactions’ occurred in the SOE Unit (State Owned Enterprise) of the Ministry which is headed by Siafa Chowo.
“The head of the Unit on his own unilaterally performed illegal transactions taking away over US$40,000 and L$1.9 million through a complete disregard to all the procedures that allows for transaction, especially so where the SOE Unit of the ministry reports directly to the Minister of Finance,” Minister Kamara said.
According to Kamara, the account through which all the transactions took place was illegally opened, noting that the former comptroller and accountant general, Sekou Sarnor, opened the account without his (Kamara’s) consent.
“The former Comptroller and Accountant General Sekou Sarnor proceeded to open an account without consultation to me and they went ahead and opened the account, he and Siafa Chowo,” he alleged.
He added that Chowo has been turned over to the Ministry of Justice for investigation and prosecution and he would be made to restitute the amount.
The Minister said that he was informed prior to becoming the head of the ministry, it was a practice for the Comptroller and Accountant General to, without any consultation to the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, write to the bank and open an account on behalf of government.
This, according to Kamara, was not in line with the Public Financial Management Act and was therefore halted under his leadership.
How to Open an Account for Government?
The Finance Minister noted that to open any account, the deputy minister for fiscal affairs, the comptroller and accountant general will make a request which has to be approved by the finance minister. The letter is then forwarded to the bank for the account to be opened.
Chowo could not be reached by FrontPageAfrica for his response to the allegation.
Account Not Illegally Opened
But, the former Comptroller General, Sekou Sarnor, who was said to have illegally opened the account for the alleged dubious transaction told FrontPage Africa that the account was opened within the confines of the law.
He said he copied the then Acting Minister of Finance (who also served as deputy minister for fiscal affairs) on the letter sent to the bank for the opening of the account.
“I wrote the Central Bank to have the account open based on a letter to me through the acting minister and deputy minister of fiscal affairs at the time.”
“ When I wrote the instruction to the Central Bank to have the account opened, the acting minister and the deputy minister for fiscal affairs is CC on the instruction of the Central Bank,” he noted.
He contended that the accounts were finally opened and funded after he had resigned from the Ministry.
“Central Bank acted on the instruction to open the account when I was out of the Ministry of Finance.
The President accepted my resignation on August 2 and immediately I moved on. I want to make it clear that it is not an illegal account, it went through the proper channel,” he said.
Sarnor expressed surprised that he was never contacted during the investigation to find out how the account was opened.
“At no time did the minister call or the investigation team to find out from me anything about this account. But indeed the account is not an illegal account, it was opened through the proper channel,” he asserted.
Could The Current Comptroller General Be Innocent?
In the previous disclosure relating to the US$82,000 allegedly embezzled by employees of the Ministry, the employees reacted to Min. Kamara’s allegation, arguing that “all withdrawals from the accounts under discussion were made in consultation with the Comptroller and Accountant General of Liberia, who is the component manager for IFMIS under the Integrated Public Financial Management Reform Project (IPFMRP).
The funds withdrawn, which are GoL counterpart funds to the IPFMRP, covered the overhead costs of upgrading the IFMIS system, and were well-documented in the work plan of the Upgrade Project.
Anyone objectively reviewing these documents without any preconceived notion will agree that they were done in keeping with internally-accepted accounting principles. Unlike Boima Kamara, no objective eye would see anything sinister about them.”
Similarly, Sarnor who said it could be possible that some illegal transactions might have taken place, questioned how monies were withdrawn from the account.
“The procedure in place for specialized account that every payment from the specialized account will have to go through the DMA [Deputy Minister for Administration] office and the Internal Audit office, cleared before the CAG [Comptroller and Accountant General] can write any check against any of the specialized account,” he noted.
According to Sarnor, if a transaction which did not conform to the PFM law took place in the account, the current Comptroller General should be made to account for such transaction because he signs all of the checks and payments from that account.
“If anything went wrong in the account, the current Comptroller General should be able to answer that and state on what reliance he signed those checks,” he averred.
