Monrovia – Just days after the leak of a preliminary draft audit on the Private Sector Development Initiative (PDSI) which spurred a ricochet criticisms amongst Liberians and international stakeholders, Dr. James Kollie, the former Deputy Minister of Finance for Fiscal Affairs and the current head of the Liberia Maritime Authority penned a detailed letter of protest to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, accusing the current Finance minister, Boima Kamara of masterminding a witch-hunt and prematurely leaking the report to the press.
Report by Rodney D. Sieh, [email protected]
“Madam Presiden, due to the unprofessional manner in which the audit was conducted coupled with the form and manner in which the draft report that had not benefited from my response was made public, I am of the conviction that the current actors have no credibility and independence in reviewing my responses and/or facts that might be presented to them because they seem to have vested interest in damaging my reputation” – Dr. James Kollie, Former Deputy Minister for Fiscal Affairs, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning
In the letter now in possession of FrontPageAfrica, dated June 14, 2017, Dr. Kollie vented his frustration over what he termed an unprofessional audit intended to ruin his reputation.
‘Current Actors Have No Credibility’
Dr. Kollie Wrote:
“Madam President, due to the unprofessional manner in which the audit was conducted coupled with the form and manner in which the draft report that had not benefited from my response was made public, I am of the conviction that the current actors have no credibility and independence in reviewing my responses and/or facts that might be presented to them because they seem to have vested interest in damaging my reputation.
Madam President, I believe the auditor and the Minister have succeeded in their singular objective of damaging my reputation as it is apparent that I have already been convicted in the court of public opinion and what is now left is that I prove my innocence in a court of competent jurisdiction which I am convinced and I cannot achieve by further subjecting myself to auditors-on-a-mission.”
While expressing compliments, appreciation, and gratitude to the President for the opportunity given him to serve in the administration, Dr. Kollie declared that the auditors and Minister Kamara will be very much interested in defending themselves in terms of what they have concluded in the draft report and protect their ‘professional reputations’.
“They are not interested in actual facts and circumstances because to them changing anything in the draft report that is now in the public domain, they would be more concerned protecting their original judgment from questioning and public disrepute, therefore both sides will be fighting to ensure that they were right in the first place.
Madam President, against this backdrop, I thought that I should deliver the report to you with the hope that third party professional investigators would be asked to look into my responses against the assertions, accusations, and claims made by the auditors against me.”
While acknowledging that it was under his supervision and during his tenure at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP), that audit period covered, he had serious observations for the consideration of the Presiden.
He accused the auditors of carrying out an audit without contacting him.
“The auditor conducted an audit on a program in which I was named multiple times without contacting me during the entire audit process. The first contact I made with the auditors was on Friday, June 2, a day after the draft report was issued. However, in the report, he mentioned that he spoke with key stakeholders as deemed necessary.”
Dr. Kollie asked: “Was I not a key stakeholder or didn’t he deem it necessary to talk to me?”
Regarding the audit finding that he was paid as a consultant, Dr. Kollie opined:
“The auditor also indicated in his draft report that I was paid twice as a consultant and a deputy minister.
However, he makes no effort or produces no evidence to substantiate this claim. If this was true, it would be very easy to prove because the Government of Liberia payroll would have carried my name along with the amounts paid to me in those months and then the checks I received as a consultant for those same months would have proven that I got double pay.”
Auditors Failed to Document Proof
Dr. Kollie said the auditor failed to document proof of the claims made against him but instead felt the need to make claims in the report and recommends that he be investigated.
“The facts of the matter show otherwise and had he engaged me as a stakeholder and asked, the clarity would have been made. There appears to be a motive. I am sure you still have on file my May 26, 2014, letter in which I informed you of my intention to move on into private life at the end of June 2014.
Based on that letter, I had requested the then Minister of Finance to notify the CSA and Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, to remove my name from the payroll at the end of June 2014 which they did. When I was reappointed on July 15, I was never placed back on the payroll because I had not been confirmed. It was in October that I was confirmed and appointed and returned on the payroll.”
Dr. Kollie averred that the auditors had no intentions of getting to the bottom of the discovery or finding the truth but was more focussed on nailing him to the cross.
“The pieces of evidence are there but asking for and reviewing them was not the intention of the auditor for their instructions or matching order were different: go and get him.”
Dr. Kollie went on to say that the report uses language and recommends actions that are outside the respected profession of auditing.
“The auditors attempted to play the role of a judge or investigator by recommending restitution and investigation because that was their goal,” he stated.
Dr. Kollie went on to inform the Presiden that the languages used by auditors left for a different set of actors in the process. He added that any good auditor would have performed a professional review and identifies weaknesses in control or seeks evidentiary support for transactions.
Instead, he said, the auditors settled for making recommendations ng investigation and restitution clearly demonstrates a prejudice or indicates the ends that the auditor sought to achieve.
‘Was Never Involved in Day-to-Day Vetting’
Said Dr. Kollie: “The auditor claims that I singularly approved and disbursed loan singularly without any regards to understanding how the project was operated. While I was the Government representative on the project and performed perfunctory roles of submitting proposals to LBDI and signing the final approved loan documents, I was never involved in the day-to-day operations or the vetting and verification of loan applicants and there was no way I could have given loans to staff and employees of the MFDP on a preferential basis.”
The project, he said, benefited from two technical teams both at the MFDP and LBDI.
“If in hind sight, it turns out that staff related business got loan from the program, this would be clearly unfortunate but to conclude, without talking to me, that I personally approved those loans is definitely an issue for concern relative to motive and intent. In the process, I was more concerned about the type of project, the location and potential benefit that would accrue to the economy.”
Dr. Kollie said his request to the bank was based on the recommendations from the technical team.
“The auditor goes further to claim that because certain loans are not performing, then I should be investigated. By the auditor’s standard, the heads of all banking and credit institutions, the Central Bank of Liberia where Minister Kamara served as Deputy Governor for Economic Policies where they disbursed tens of millions of dollars in loans to market women that are grossly underperforming, should be investigated because loans are not performing.”
The former Deputy Minister said the action speaks to the state of mind and objective of the auditor. “An impartial auditor would seek to understand why these loans are not performing and recommend corrective actions but to suggest or indicate that there has been criminal wrongdoing and therefore an investigation is warranted is suggestive of motives.”
Notwithstanding, Dr. Kollie added that the MOU between the MFDP and LBDI clearly states that the LBDI will be responsible for collection and recovery.
“For an audit that took two months without much interactions with key stakeholders, the auditor’s refusal to allow sufficient time (about 2 weeks) so that a proper response could be provided is sufficient indication that the auditor is rushing to achieve his objective and not to understand and review the project.
Has he engaged the management of LBDI and the technical team that managed the facility? Why the rush to conclude an audit that impinges on another person’s reputation?”
Auditors ‘Out on a Limb’ to ‘Tarnish Me’
That the auditor decided to mention that certain individuals should account for US$1.6 million that he acknowledges was deposited in the Consolidated Account, explained Dr. Kollie, clearly demonstrated that he was going on the limb to tarnish the reputation of others because a simple review of the bank statement at the CBL could be done with a simple phone call from the Minister of Finance.
He added that the auditors knew that mentioning such amount along with the names of others would indeed tarnish their reputation.
“No professional auditor would have mentioned such because moving money from a project account into the Consolidated Account is what we all cave so that we can fund the general operations of the Government.”
Dr. Kollie charged that the fact that Minister Kamara and his team decided to leak the draft report to media houses without the benefit of the response from the auditee further exposes the motive of the audit.
‘Program Was Never a Secret Scheme’
He pointed out to the Presiden that contrary to what auditors tried to present in the draft report, the program was never a secret scheme but rather, one that was discussed in the EMT, Cabinet and was approved in the FY13/14 National Budget and it was publicized sufficiently in Monrovia and in the counties.
- An entrepreneur, Mr. Rameses Bright (T.R. Enterprise), located in Bensonville, who is engaged in the craft of making small agro-processing equipment is a beneficiary of this program;
- The Liberian owned nail factory located in the Industrial Park and mentioned in the State of Nation address is a beneficiary of this facility;
- When I informed the EMT that a Liberian (David Suah) had left his corporate job and had planted more than 169 acres of rice and cassava in Sinoe and that he needed support to pay folks to harvest or he would lose the entire harvest and we agreed that we should not allow that to happen, this was the facility;
- When the issue of conducting feasibility studies at the Cocopa for determining whether the old rubber trees could be used to make rubber wood, this was the facility.
- When Songhai (the Center Songhai Liberia), a local NGO in the business of vegetable farming and training young Liberians how to manage agricultural project needed funding to advance the project, it was this facility that provided the needed support;
- More than 46 businesses across the country (as far as Sinoe) benefited from this facility. It is not true that this was a scheme intended to give employees of the Ministry loan. The auditor counted about 4 out of the 46 businesses as having ties to employees of the MFDP;
- Because these are loans and not grants, they can and should be fully recovered. Madam Presiden, this program was never designed and executed in secret and was never used for the purpose of giving loans to the employees of the MFDP as it has been presented in the draft report.
Dr. Kollie said it was agreed that it was in the interest of the country, in the immediate aftermath of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), to provide some support to local businesses and entrepreneurs who were finding it difficult to access traditional bank loans.
“If in hindsight we all believe that this was a bad idea, and then we need to find a way to move forward. I am sure that some of the current actions we are taking today, when reviewed in the future can be corrected, therefore to accuse me of corruption or criminal wrongdoing because a policy measure didn’t achieve the desired outcome is wholly unfair to me and the service I have provided to our dear country during some of darkest moments.”
