BRA spent $1.7m in three months but showed no records-Auditor General
By T. Roble
GOOBJOOG NEWS|MOGADISHU: Banaadir Regional Authority which encompasses the capital Mogadishu spent $1.7 million in the financial year 2019 but could not account for the expenditure since there was no supporting documents, Auditor General Mohamed Ali has said.
The Auditor-General report released Thursday details unaccounted expenditure covering rents, road construction, social activities, youth training, and purchases of vehicles among other items. Virtually all this spending happened in the last three months of the financial year.
Only one transaction of $11,000 took place in April 2019 while the majority of the spending adding up to over 99% occurred between October and December 2019 in what could allude to a rush to spend before the purse was zipped by the national treasury.
As of August 2020, the financial statements for the Banadir Regional Administration for the year ended 31st December 2019 had neither been prepared nor been submitted for audit.
In one instance, a senior BRA official was paid $35,000 on October 13, 2019, under cheque number 128539 but there was no invoice nor receipt voucher to justify the payments. Between November 5 and 19, 2019, BRA issued three cheques worth $308,450 for ‘Organization for regional youth development’. Again, there were no invoices and receipt vouchers.
BRA also issued cheques to the tune of $850,423 between December 5 and the last day of the month but again without invoices, contracts and proof of payment, and payee and list of attendees for events.
NO FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
The inconsistencies pointed out by the Auditor General include lack of receipt vouchers, contracts, invoices, and in some cases the payee was not identified. In conventional financial practice, a contractor must submit an invoice for payments detailing work done and receipts issued upon payment. Lack of such documents in effect put to question whether work was ever done. Similarly, the absence of a contract document almost makes a transaction voidable since there are no terms of reference for the assigned work.
The regional authority also failed to avail vehicles bought for physical inspection, the report reads.
“It was however observed that the Banadir Regional Administration were not able to produce for our audit a list of all their vehicles and logbooks of the vehicles for verification,” the report notes.” None of the vehicles was physically produced for physical verification.”
Interestingly, the Auditor General notes that BRA, which receives an average of $15 million allocations from the national budget annually had not submitted nor prepared its financial statements for the FY 2019 as of August 2020.