Fresh audit for Central Bank

HE Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday ordered the Auditor General ’Mathabo Makenete to immediately re-audit the Central Bank of Lesotho. This comes after the PAC said it had unearthed “a lot of discrepancies” in transactions that happened during the Covid-19 pandemic with several government suppliers.

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The PAC chairperson, ’Machabana Lemphane-Letsie, said “the bank will soon receive a letter from the clerk initiating a fresh audit”

“I can assure you we are going to find a lot of worms when auditing the Central Bank,” Lemphane-Letsie said.

A PAC member, Moeketsi Motšoane, said the decision to re-audit the Central Bank was made by the entire committee.

Motšoane said the Central Bank’s “duplicated transactions were signed by one person.”

“We are not happy with the answers you are giving us,” Motšoane told the bank’s deputy governor, Lehlomela Mohapi, during the interview.

This was in response to Mohapi’s statement that the Central Bank had resolved to pay back M1.3 million to the government which was fraudulently paid to MRP Enterprises (Pty) Ltd.

The M1.3 million is part of the M2.6 million that was paid to the company between January 28 and February 11, 2021.

The Central Bank blamed the fraud on Covid-19 working arrangements and their weak internal systems.

The money is just part of many transactions that were questioned and called fraudulent in the Auditor General’s 2022 financial reports.

Mohapi told the committee that their board had resolved to pay back the M1.3 million duplicated transactions to the government.

He said the resolution has not yet been implemented as it is still on Finance Minister Retšelisitsoe Matlanyane’s table.

Dr Matlanyane was the Central Bank governor when the fraud happened.

Lemphane-Letsie asked Mohapi if they “waited for Matlanyane to be a minister so that you ask for your crimes to be written off?”

“In 2021 the current finance minister was the governor. Maybe you waited for her to be a minister, thinking that she will understand your situation,” Lemphane-Letsie said.

“What is the role of Matlanyane there when the board has already decided (on the matter)?” she said.

“Does it mean she is part of that corruption that happened at the Central Bank?”

Mohapi said they could not just pay without Matlanyane’s approval.

Mohapi also said the duplication payment “was caused by two reasons that include the Covid-19”.

He said many of the bank’s employees were working from home during Covid-19 “and this led to them making payments without supervisory oversight”.

“Under normal circumstances the person paying does the payments in the presence of the supervisor,” Mohapi said.

“But here there was no person to supervise the transactions,” he said.

He also blamed their system for being weak in detecting duplicated transaction payments.

“Through the database we normally detect duplicate instructions and we thought it would be enough to control duplications.”

Lemphane-Letsie asked him to name the person who made such a payment without the Accountant General’s knowledge.

Mohapi said they had initiated a forensic audit to find out if some of their employees were involved, without mentioning the name of the individual who authorised the payment.

“But none of our employees were implicated,” he said.

Lemphane-Letsie again asked Mohapi why they did not inform the company to return the extra money that was deposited in their accounts instead of making a commitment to pay back the government.

“This shows that you are protecting that company. Maybe you benefited,” she said.

She asked why the payee who made the payment without approval has not been suspended from their duties.

The Director of Financial Markets, Matšabisa Thamae, told the committee that they changed the way they operate during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Thamae said in normal circumstances the payments are done manually through a copy with clear written instructions and the account to be paid.

“It is then scrutinised whether it is signed by the right people until it reaches the payers’ desk, then a supervisor approves and then it is done,” Thamae said.

He said during Covid-19 the instructions were scanned and sent via mail to a group of payers, “both of who were on duty on that week and those who would be on the next week’s shift”.

He said the duplication happened because “the instructions to pay were sent in that group of payers”.

“This led to the payers on that week shift paying M1.3 million to the company, unfortunately the group that came the following week did not know that the payment was done and they paid again,” he said.

He further disclosed that they delayed to get the statements as they use FNB to pay international companies.

“MRP is a South African company,” he said.

He clarified that the two groups of payers could not communicate smoothly due to Covid-19 challenges.

Motšoane argued that the bank could easily find the person who made the payment “as the email messages will show which email address made a transfer”.

Nkheli Liphoto

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