Give Me Power to Prosecute – Auditor General

The Auditor-General Daniel Domelevo has applied to the Attorney General to grant him prosecutorial powers to haul persons indicted in his report before the court.

This was disclosed Monday February 5 at a news conference, where Mr. Domelevo listed various actions the Auditor General’s Department is taking to deal with persons who continue to abuse the public purse.

Mr. Domelevo last year surcharged four public officials for allegedly causing financial loss to the state. The action was in fulfillment of an order by the Supreme Court that he should immediately begin the process of surcharging any person found to have misappropriated state funds.

The seven-member panel headed by Sophia Akuffo further ordered that where applicable criminal action should be taken against the accused persons by the Attorney General.

Speaking on the back of the 2016 Auditor General’s report which revealed that some state agencies engaged in unlawful monetary practices, Mr. Domelevo said, “We are not going to finish our audit and wait for the TV show at Public Accounts [Committee] anymore.”

He warned “when we finish our audit, we raise observations against you and you decide to ignore it we will disallow the expenditure and surcharge you and I told my colleagues that beginning this year we must have to apply the law.”

He said the Auditor General’s Department has so much power under the law but slept over it. “…Under the section 29 subsection 2 it says that ‘anyone who does not even meet the 30 days deadline…we should stop his salaries’. It is in the law that once we have raised an observation after 30 days you decide not to respond, you should not be paid and we have to start that now. We have to block peoples salaries. And even after blocking your salaries if you don’t come we will now disallow the expenditure and surcharge you,” he said.

Internal auditors being abused

Urging government to implement the series of reports emanating from his department, Mr. Domelevo also bemoaned of continuous abuse being meted out to internal auditors by state institutions in their quest to fight corruption.

“Going forward in our report,” he said “we have recommended to government and we think the government will take us serious [and] we think internal auditing is too weak in the public service.

He said there is the need to review the internal audit act to make sure that internal auditors belong to his department “independent of the spending officers” they police otherwise they will continue “bullying them.”

“Hardly does a week pass by that an internal auditor will not come to my office and say sir ‘we want to belong to the audit service’.”

Source: Starrfmonline