People’s Party regime most porous
A financial analysis report that could form the basis of a thorough forensic audit, has established that during the last quarter of the rule of former president Joyce Banda’s People’s Party (PP), more transactions amounting to about K350 billion could not be accounted for.
PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services (Pty) Limited (PwC) contracted by the Auditor General to pore over public financial activities that took place between January 2009 and December 2014 has established that at least over K577 billion cannot be accounted for.
According to the table showing cheques that matched between cheque stub table and bank statement, between September and December 2013 when the PP Government was in power cheque stubs of close to K350 billion was transacted and was only matched with less than K50 billion in the bank statements.
This is in total contrast with the third quarter of 2012 when Banda had just been in power as both the stubs and the bank statement which were slightly above K60 billion as was the case in the first, second and third quarter of 2013.
The report details the number of cheque stub entries matched to the bank statement payments per quarter.
“The majority of entries on cheque stub table were effected in the fourth quarter of 2013 with the second highest number of payments on the bank statement, agreeing to this criteria, occurred in the first quarter of 2014,” the report observes.
“Further, the majority of entries on the cheque stub table were effected in the fourth quarter 2012 whilst the second highest number of payments occurred in the first quarter of 2014,” it states.
It further observes that the total number of bank statement payments during the period January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2014 is 1,788,295.
The report says the total number of payment entries on the Cashbook for the same period is 1,007,075 and as such 781,220 transactions are not accounted for in the Cashbook.
It also observes that the total value of payments on the bank statement during the period amounted to K1,850,439,776,036.36.
The PwC report further states that the total value of Cashbook entries during the same period amounted to K1,273,200,935,525.69, this translates to a shortfall of K577,238,840,510.67 of payments reflected on the bank statements, but not on the Cashbook.
“This amounts to 31.19% of the value of payments not reflecting in the cashbook. Based on the aforementioned it appears that the majority of transactions not appearing in the Cashbook are transactions greater than or equal to K1 million,” it states.
A variance of 43.69 percent, the report says, exists between the number of bank statement payments and the number of Cashbook entries within the same period.
“This variance needs to be further investigated before a complete reconstruction of the Cashbook (from the bank statement payments) would be possible,” it says.
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