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Audits
(Kaieteur News) – Recent audits have always left the thought of something missing. How much was being ignored or avoided, ranked among the unknowns. How much was being watered down, or given a cursory glance, but not the kind of studious effort that the billions demanded. An audit expert filled in some of the blanks on the 2024 audit report of the PPPC Government’s activities, and they’re distressing. President Irfaan Ali’s claim of “significant improvement in transparency and accountability” was exposed for not having foundation.
Former Auditor General, Anand Goolsarran, an authority on audit practices and accounting standards, went to work on the 2024 audit report, and he tore up the impressive picture that the president painted. To begin with, the audit general issued qualified opinions on two of the eleven statements on the consolidated public accounts of Guyana. One was on the Statement of Current Assets and Liabilities of the Government, and the second was on the Financial Report of the Deposit Fund. When the auditor general found it necessary to issue not one, but two, qualified opinions, and for the major areas that he did, that weakens any claim by anyone of “significant improvement in transparency and accountability.” That is either the situation of a drowning man ignoring his predicament and crying out that he is safe (not to worry), or someone blessed with a powerful imagination, one that is also fevered. When a head of state takes the position that he did in the face of two qualified opinions in the massive areas that were highlighted, it is obvious that political propaganda has taken over.
For the benefit of the ordinary citizen, a qualified audit opinion is where the audit team cannot do otherwise, because what its members have probed has too many gaps, too much of what leaves unanswered questions and leads to unacceptable conclusions. Broadly speaking, it could amount to professional misconduct, aiding and abetting glaring wrongs, if not red-flagged through a qualified opinion. Guyana’s deposit fund involved the two-way movement of billions, through billions going in and billions going out as advances. According to Goolsarran’s review, as presented in his weekly Stabroek News column, the audit effort on that deposit fund was a “cut-and-paste” job from past years, with billions channeled into miscellaneous accounts, and no explanations recorded. Cutting and pasting is making use of computer proficiency to save time, but when executed in vital areas, it could also be of sloth, not looking too deeply, for fear of what could be uncovered. Auditors should neither pull punches, nor should they try to cut corners, but call issues as they see them. When audit teams operate without fear or favor, the end result is that Guyanese taxpayers and debt owners have the clearest idea of how their dollars were spent, and what concerns remain.
Goolsarran then went still further with a tough stance, when he put another aspect of the 2024 audit under his powerful stethoscope. Was a real audit done of the accounts reviewed, and how could that be claimed, when there are those serious lapses in the process, as presented? He then made another tough call, when he pointed to areas that have been controversial, which do not support improvement in transparency and accountability. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has not reported on reviews of public accounts for the last six years. When there is such a long span of nothing of substance coming out of the watchdog PAC, it is the height of irresponsibility for anyone to claim improvements in transparency and accountability. And, how can this be so, when overpayments climbed from $300M in 2023 to over a billion dollars two years later, tripling of overpayments. After the many recommendations implemented how was there still a 300 plus percentage increase in overpayments? Where are the grounds to prove that what was overpaid was, in fact, recovered?
Some contracts awards did not meet stated criteria, generated considerable disputes, some of which have never been put to rest, with taxpayers footing the bill. The auditor in Goolsarran exposed significant issues with 2024 audit report, leaving Guyanese to question what more could still be missing, and what kind of six-for-nine they are getting with these audits.
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