By Saio Marrah
Hotel receipts for presidential overseas travels were tendered on Monday 13th November at the tribunal investigating the suspended Auditor General, Lara Taylor-Pearce, and her deputy, Tamba Momoh with particular attention to an amount of 700 United States Dollars.
During cross-examination, Lawyer Roland Wright, representing the Auditor General, told the Assistant Accountant in the office of the President, Musa Jajua, that the $700 discrepancy was a loss to the government of Sierra Leone but the witness rejected the suggestion saying it was a loss to a hotel.
The witness, who earlier told the tribunal that among his duties was to keep custody of all receipts relating to financial affairs in the unit of the Secretary to the President, also informed the tribunal that he was not in possession of the receipts in question at the time the audit team requested them. He said the State Chief of Protocol in the office of president had them in his possession. Jajua said the receipts were handed over to the audit team later after they asked for them a second time.
The witness insisted that personnel in the office of the president cooperated by giving all necessary documents requested by the audit team with the exception of those hotel receipts which he said were not in his possession but were produced during the verification, not at the beginning of the audit exercise. According to the witness, the audit exercise was completed in June 2021, but he could not recall when he submitted the receipts to the auditors.
State Prosecutor, Ahmed M. Bockarie told the tribunal that the first verification report was done on the 10th, the second on the 15th, and the third verification on the 19th of October 2021.
Lawyer Roland Wright informed the three-judge panel of the tribunal headed by Justice Nyawo Mattruri-Jones that a letter from the officials in the office of the president addressed to the Acting Auditor General was dated 21 December 2021, when the substantive Auditor General was not in the office. According to him, the letter contained the receipts requested by the audit team.
Wright also informed the tribunal that the letter was written by a third party regarding the said document. While the first document in respect of the receipts was signed by the Finance Manager of Lancaster Eden Bay Hotel in Dubai, the summary of the same document was signed by the Chairman of the hotel, but both the documents and its summary have the same date. He then raised suspicion about possible forgery and added that “those who forge documents should be charged to court…sentenced to 15 years, not those being diligent to be investigated.”
He further told the tribunal that the receipt from the hotel in Dubai showed payable instead of paid and that while the letter was talking about a visit made in 2019, the witness was talking about one made in 2020.
During his testimony in chief, the witness said his duties include processing vouchers, and liaising with the Ministry of Finance, and the Central Bank through the Secretary to the President. He said he is also in charge of coordinating payment for local and overseas travel on being approved by the Secretary to the President.
He said sometime in May 2021, the Audit Service wrote a letter asking for an engagement with his office which he said was approved. He said at the meeting the audit team informed them about the documents which they needed for the audit process and that the required documents were provided to them.
The witness said they further met with the auditor and later received a draft of their report upon which they requested other documents including the hotel receipts which were provided and that the documents were verified and the auditors were satisfied with them. He said in the final draft, the auditors noted that the matter had been resolved. Those documents included receipts of hotel bills of the presidential entourage to South Africa, The Gambia, and Dubai.
According to the witness, on the final verification on the 19th of October 2021, the Audit Service commented on the document as “false” but that the office of the president was never contacted in that regard. He said his office was not familiar with the third-party document that the defence lawyer referred to.
Proceedings continue.
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