AG Dennis admits payments blocked from his office carrying out fieldwork into ESP

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Auditor-General David Teika Dennis has admitted that funding for his officers to carry out field work on ESP in the provinces was blocked raising very serious concerns.

Dennis and his team at the OAG last week released the findings of the report into the $309m Economic Stimulus Package. A funding support by the government to help stimulate the economy following the COVID-19 onlaught.

The report found serious allegations of abuse of public funds especially the imprest component. And there is now a public outcry for police to step in to investigate those who managed and abused the funds.

Last week, besides releasing the findings and recommendations, Dennis expressed challenges which his office face when carrying out audit work into the ESP.

Dennis said: “My team also had payments to undertake audit fieldwork being blocked raising serious concerns about the impingement of the independence of my office. In relation to the conduct of this audit my team were faced with numerous delays including slow delivery or missing documentation and, in some cases, only forthcoming after the draft audit report had been shared.”

The OAG comes under the Ministry of Finance and Treasury.

Other common themes, Dennis added, include the lack of transparency about who received funding and what it was received for, inadequate documentation and reporting across the ESP and in many cases documentation to support the validity of actions and transactions were not available.

“This area remains a concern across Government which requires urgent attention,” he said.

“There are also areas in which noncompliance and potential of fraud was evident with many payments being signed for by Government officials on behalf of beneficiaries without documented authorisation, including payments totalling over $6 million being signed for by one officer,” he said.

Meanwhile he said stated that they also found that applicants selected their own supplier without any requirement for a competitive process.

“MoFT told us that the general bid waiver had been discussed and approved by the Central Tender Board (CTB). However, we note the bid waiver was for future procurements, and we consider the Public Financial Management Act 2013 does not provide for in advance blanket procurement approvals, as was attempted here. Such a process undermines controls and the effectiveness of procurement rules. Moreover, a copy of the bid waiver was not provided to the OAG.

Other direct payments were for grants to businesses in the export industries to allow them to continue to buy products. The OAG was not provided with any of these applications but some grants appear to have been gifts with no conditions attached. There was no requirement for these larger businesses to repay the Government once they had sold the product the grant allowed them to buy,” he said.

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