By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has cleared the University of Sierra Leone (USL) of any possible corruption charges that could have stemmed from the 2018 Audit Report. The ACC announced their findings in a press statement on Monday, after more than six months of investigation into issues raised in the latest report from the country’s Auditor General.
The report, which was released last year, revealed that more than Le140 billion was unaccounted for by government ministries, departments, agencies (MDAs), as well as local governments. The ACC immediately sprung into action to follow up on the possible situations of corruption that were highlighted in the report.
The report indicated that USL made payments between Le100 million to Le7 billion to constituent universities without proper documentation.
In their statement on Monday, ACC said they have now seen documents that support those payment claims.
ACC states: “The ACC has obtained the required financial and other supporting documents. The said documents have been analyzed and found to be consistent with the statements made by the officials of the university.”
“There was therefore no loss,” the statement added.
But these financial payments were not the only issues raised. The Audit report also highlighted poor accounting methods that were used by some of the constituent colleges to keep their books.
One of the three colleges was using excel to do accounting, instead of a standard accounting software like SAGE, which was later recommended by the auditors.
The USL’s case is one of few issues that have been drawn to a close. The ACC flagged 21 cases of possible corruptions, which they sought to investigate since last December. ACC said it is currently investigating 13 cases. Two cases have already been closed because of lack of evidence and two have been charged to court, all as a result of the findings of the 2018 report.
A total of Le2.7 billion has been recovered by the commission’s investigation teams into the different sectors, it said.
But whiles ACC has gone on with investigation, the House of Parliament has not shown enough interest to investigate the issues and come out with a report. The report is yet to be laid in the Well of Parliament for discussion by the Members of Parliament, showing a familiar pattern of annually shoving aside the findings of audit report.
The University has not released a statement since ACC announced their findings on Monday. The USL has three constituent colleges: Fourah Bay College, Institute of Public Administration and Management, and College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences.
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