By Thomas Dixon
Lara Taylor Pearce has responded to the damning report on a tribunal to investigate her and the Deputy Tamba Momoh.
Her response came after the report was laid in parliament and was made known to the public.
The report indicted the Auditor General and her Deputy for unprofessionalism, cronyism, unfairness and conflict of interest amongst others.
In her initial statement, Lara Taylor Pearce revealed that as per the engagement letter, the audit of the Office of the President was a COMPLIANCE audit carried out using ISSAI 4000 and that under this standard, documents and records can be referred to third parties for authentication purposes when the need arises as confirmed by three expert defence witnesses.
“The COMPLIANCE AUDIT of the Office of the President included the audit of all funds provided to and managed by that office. These funds included all IMPREST directly provided for, and used for specific purposes. The funds in question were directly utilized by the Office of the President, and the ASSL had the mandate to independently audit those funds,” she said.
That it is interesting to note that the Tribunal also disregarded the two Sierra Leonean defence witnesses, whose combined experience both in private and public sector auditing including within the ASSL, more than doubles the experience of the State’s own expert witness.
That for the avoidance of doubt, Sierra Leone has never had, nor has there been any Sierra Leone specific audit standard, or Sierra Leone specific third party confirmation request process, as the Tribunal was falsely (and may be willingly) led to believe.
She stated that with regards the Performance audit of the FCC, the evidence given by the witnesses on this issue was not only baseless, they were unfounded, untruthful, and mischievous to say the least because the communication process pertaining to the letter described in the report is blatantly incorrect as there is a clear chain of command for dealing with such issues within the organization.
“For further clarity on the FCC donor funds issue, the public is informed that for both the
FINANCIAL STATEMENT AUDITS and PERFORMANCE AUDITS of the FCC, donor funds were not managed by the FCC but by implementing partners identified by the donors in question,” she maintained.
That the Financial management aspect of the use of funds could not have been audited by the ASSL and that they were not for example funds for imprest given to the FCC for their direct use, pointing out that these funds were not revenue generated by the FCC, nor were they provided to the FCC from the Consolidated funds for carrying out the activities of the FCC.
She noted that the issue of conflict of interest was never brought up neither any evidence was ever led to the effect during the entire course of the Tribunal hearings.
“I categorically state that there was no breach of confidentiality, no information was disclosed to any party not part of the transactions in question. The only third parties from whom authentication was sought, were those whose businesses were disclosed on receipts issued as audit supporting evidence by the office of the President, even so, the letter requesting authentication did not mention the name or institution for which authentication was being sought,” she dismissed the finding of breach of confidentiality.
