By Hassan Y. Koroma
The Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) Report for 2020/21 discovered irregularities in the management of expenditure at the Petroleum Directorate.
A review of the Directorate revealed that a total payment of Le415,951,472,60 was made to suppliers without supporting documents such as delivery notes, invoices, receipts, beneficiaries, signatures and among others and that ASSL could not confirm the eligibility of these payments.
It was also reported that the sum of Le55,804,125 was paid as GST, for which GST invoices were not made available for review. This violates Section 31 (1) of the Goods and Services Act 2019.
It was also observed that, upon examination of procurement records, various irregularities were revealed for procurement activities undertaken totaling Le69,445,000 for the year under reviewed.
from the total amount of Le65,445,000, and that documents were only provided for Le40,595,000 (58%), leaving an outstanding balance of Le28,850,000 for which procurement documents were not submitted, therefore, the issue remained unresolved.