OccupyGhana, a public-spirited pressure group has raised doubts about the Auditor-General’s claim that between from 2017 to 2020, it disallowed ¢4 billion and ‘retrieved’ ¢2.2 billion from the disallowances.
According to the group in a statement dated 30 September 2022, “a close reading of the story, and comparing its contents which information you have provided to us in your letters dated 14 June and 4 July 2022, rather give in much cause for concern, grounds to doubts the veracity of your claims, and bases to question the legality of some of steps you claim to have taken.”
Read the full unedited statement from the group:
RE: AUDITOR-GENERAL RETRIEVES GH¢2.2 BN – REPRESENTS DISALLOWANES FROM 2017 TO 2020
Our attention has been drawn to headline stories in several newspapers (and more specifically in the Daily Graphic and published on 18 September 2022 on graphic.com.gh), following your meeting with Civil Society Organisations and your press interviews, that your office has disallowed ¢4 billion and ‘retrieved’ ¢2.2 billion from those disallowances between 2017 and 2020. You also disclosed that you have opened a recoveries account with the Bank of Ghana, into which ¢908,653 has allegedly been paid.
Ordinarily, this should be good news that finally, you are beginning to exercise the disallowance and surcharge powers that the Constitution vests in your office, and which the Supreme Court has mandatorily injuncted you to exercise every time the circumstances listed in article 187(7)(b) of the Constitution come up in the course of your audits.
However, a close reading of the story, and comparing its contents which information you have provided to us in your letters dated 14 June and 4 July 2022, rather give in much cause for concern, grounds to doubts the veracity of your claims, and bases to question the legality of some of steps you claim to have taken.
AUDITOR-GENERAL’S RECOVERIES ACCOUNT
We were also struck by your claim that ‘two months ago’, you opened the above-named account with the Bank of Ghana, and that a ‘recovered’ sum of ¢908,653 has allegedly been collected into that account, as at 7 September 2022. You do not disclose the source of the amounts ‘recovered’ into this account, and whether or not it forms a part of the ¢2.2 billion allegedly ‘retrieved’.
What is more concerning to us is that section 17(2) of the Audit Service Act demands that ‘ a sum specified by the Auditor-General to be due from any person shall be paid by that person to the department or institution’. From this provision, your alleged recoveries into the above- named account are illegal. The persons affected are to pay the amounts ‘ to the departments or institution’ and not to any special account that you may have opened.
Kindly take steps to rectify this at your earliest convenience.
ALLEGED DISALLOWANCE
The terms ‘disallowance’ and ‘surcharge’ are constitutional terms that have been specifically defined by the Supreme Court in OCCUPYGHANA v ATTORNEY-GENERAL. From that decision a ‘disallowance’ is when ‘the Auditor-General will formally refuse to accept or allow any item of expenditure that is contrary to law, etc. ‘A surcharge is the subsequent event when ‘the Auditor General now proceeds to impose on extra charge as penalty for the retrieval of the amount or expenditure that he has refused to allow or accept, because it was contrary to law’. Clearly, disallowances or surcharges do not exist in a vacuum. They require formal processes.
This formality requirement is stated in section 17(1) of the Auditor Service Act, 2000 (Act 584), which mandatorily demands that you ‘shall specify to the appropriate head of department or institution the amount due from any person whom he has made a surcharge or disallowance’, Section 17(6) then reinforces this formal requirement by saying that in any recovery proceedings, ‘o certificate signed by the Auditor-General shall be prima focie evidence of the facts certified’.
To compound matters, you informed us, in your letter to us dated 14 June 2022, that you had (1) decided that before you issue the formal specification/notice, you will first issue a notice of intention to disallow, and (ii) established a committee that ‘is collecting evidence from the various audit teams before proceedings with the notice of intention to disallow and/or surcharge and follow it up with disallowance and surcharge certificate where appropriate’.
Clearly, you cannot claim to have disallowed any expenditure, without the formal documentation required of you by both the Supreme Court and the Act, Further, you cannot claim to have ‘retrieved’ any sums unless and until you have issued surcharges.
That is why we are struck at the blinding speed with which you have transitioned from setting up the committee, to the committee concluding its work, to issuing your notice or intention to disallow ¢4 Billion, to issuing your disallowing certificate, and to retrieving ¢2.2 billion (without surcharge certificates), and all between June and now. We are therefore curious to know how these headline disallowances and consequent ‘retrievals’ occurred.
We therefore respectfully demand, in the exercise of our right to information under both the Constitution and the Right to Information Act, 2019 (Act 989) that you provide to use the specifics, details and particulars of the alleged disallowances and retrievals that have taken place since you assumed office as Acting Auditor-General and then as Auditor- General, providing the names of the people involved, amounts allegedly retrieved from each of them, and when and how the said retrievals occurred.
Yours in the service of God and Country
OccupyGhana