KPMG PULLS OUT OF MANAGEMENT OF EBOLA FUND Thursday, October 9, 2014 Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler-SL (KPMG-SL) Inc. is no longer the accountant in the management and procurement activities of the EBOLA FUND under the direction of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Freetown. Reached by phone in Freetown, KPMG Senior Managing Partner (SL), Mr. V.T.O. Decker, stated that “KPMG is no longer involved in the management of the Ebola Fund” under the auspices of the EOC. He refused to answer any further questions by invoking business partner privilege and when pressed as to whether KPMG can unilaterally withdraw from a contract without contractual violations by the other party, he stated categorically that he will not answer any more questions on the reasons for the withdrawal unless he was cleared to do so by his client, which in this case is the government of Sierra Leone. “And even if I were to receive such clearance, I’ll still have to clear it with my international partners as well as weigh the impact on the ethics of my practice” Vidal Decker ended the discussion. The withdrawal of the well-respected KPMG accounting firm from the management of the Ebola Fund has added fuel to the fire of the government’s critics that the failure to control the Ebola epidemic is a clear manifestation of the mismanagement and utter incompetence of the APC government of President Ernest Bai Koroma. According to Dr. P.K. Muana, a member of the North America branch of the main Opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP-NA) and a vociferous critic of the government, there is no doubt that KPMG withdrew because of massive embezzlement in which the firm did not want to become ensnared and risk tarnishing its reputation in the process. “Officials at the Ministry of Health and the Chief Medical Officer keep ‘chopping’ EBOLA funds without recourse to the EOC. When confronted, they tell the KPMG auditors that the expenditure is authorized directly from State House. Obviously, Ernest Koromas office has admitted to directing some of those irregular expenses.” Dr. Muana stated. “Furthermore”, he went on, “various APC functionaries, contractors, Ministry of Health officials and people who claim to be authorized by President Koroma have been UNDERTAKING PROCUREMENT ACTIVITIES (his emphasis) and granting contracts to APC party hacks and associates of the President without following the very clear procurement guidelines set by the EOC”. He ended a recent post on an Internet forum with a parting shot at the Chief Medical Officer, who he claimed, without details, “has been named in a series of irregular financial cases and has yet to be prosecuted because of his ethnic and political affiliations with the President”. At the time of this publication, the government has not even acknowledged that KPMG is no longer a part of the management of the Ebola Fund and when asked for a comment, Ministry of Information official refused to respond to what they characterized as “preposterous claims by the opposition that KPMG withdrew because of massive corruption”. However, reliable sources both within the government and diplomatic corps, who declined to be named because they have not been cleared to comment on such matters , intimate that the withdrawal of KPMG may be more a result of logistics than outright graft, though they will not rule out the latter as a peripheral issue. Emergency operations specialists agree that the operation of such a fund, that requires quick decisions in a matter of life and death situations, may not lend itself to the stringent requirements of an accounting firm. Under the current circumstances, a diplomat pointed to the example of a container with much needed supplies sitting in the docks for months while the paperwork is being completed to assure compliance, instead of swiftly clearing it and getting the equipment where it is needed. According to a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) source with direct knowledge of the operations of the Ebola Emergency Operations Center (EOC), there is always a conflict between stringent accounting policies and the swift delivery of assets in emergency operations, issues that he thinks were not adequately accounted for when the current regime was implemented. “The government and its international partners in the EOC” he furthered, “are now reviewing the process to develop a regime that will allow for transparency and accountability without hindering the response to the Ebola emergency”. He ended by stating that KPMG may yet be a member of that process once the modifications have been made. salonepost/sp/news/articles/article200.asp
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 00:32:30 +0000
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