By Mabinty M. Kamara
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has announced that it has commenced investigations into the “Office of the First Lady, past and present, dealing with matters of budgetary justifications for allocations and expenditures of State funds to that entity and the legal and regulatory framework, if any, for them.”
According to the statement issued in Freetown, preliminary findings of the anti-graft agency has so far revealed that “the Office of the First Lady had been receiving billions of Leones of State funds yearly, spanning 14 years to date – and most of the payments were either directly made to the holders of that office or channeled, through the Presidency, as normal presidential official expenditure signed-off on by respective Secretaries to the President.”
In the same vain, the statement adds that the Agency was also reviewing Section 39 of the Public Financial Management Act, 2016; which gives the State, authority to expend State funds to unallocated Head(s) of expenditure to a certain threshold, to “necessary” public cause(s), and whether such threshold was used and/or breached in making payments such as the ones under review, over the years.
“We are therefore at the stage of collecting and analyzing records of accounts, official approval documents and any legal or regulatory framework around such payments; and the conclusions reached will assist in determining progress on the issue. We will also interview persons of interest in that regard, where necessary. We shall keep the public fully informed on our findings, conclusions and next steps,” the statement adds.
The office of the First Lady under Fatima Bio has been the topic of discussions over the last few weeks on both social and conventional media about alleged misuse of public funds.
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