Daniel Yaw Domelevo
An
Accra High Court has set aside the decision by the Auditor General, Daniel
Domelevo, to disallow and surcharge a construction company based on its audit
report.
The Auditor
General had disallowed and surcharged Joshob Construction Company Limited a
total of GH¢11,777,823.40 which is its IPC 10 pending payment.
Not
satisfied with the decision, the company took the Auditor General to court to
appeal his decision to disallow and surcharge it.
Interestingly,
the Auditor General, in his written address to the court, conceded to the
content of the appeal.
The
court, presided over by Justice Anthony Kofi Abada in his judgment, reversed
and annulled the Auditor General’s report and ruled in favour of the appellant,
Joshob Company Ltd.
“This
is an appeal against the defendant decision contained in a report dated 23rd
January, 2018 delivered by Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo on the respondents
disallowance and surcharge of appellant’s claims respecting IPC No 10, 11 and 12
which were pending payment. The defendant/respondent have conceded per their
letter dated and filed on 17th April, 2018 IPC No 10, 11 and 12. I shall
accordingly allow the appeal to set aside the purported claims of the
defendant/respondent,” the court ruled.
The
court subsequently ordered the Ministry of Finance, Department of Urban Roads and
or the Controller and Accountant General to pay the total sum of GH¢11,772,823.40
to the appellant.
The
court also awarded a cost of GH¢5,000 against the Auditor General.
Second Loss
This is
the second appeal that has been ruled against the decision of the Auditor
General to disallow and surcharge individuals and companies.
Another
Accra High Court presided over by Justice Georgina Mensah-Datsa in October this
year nullified the audit findings against former Chief Executive of the
National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Sylvester Mensah, and his deputy,
Alex Nartey.
According
to the judge, the audit and notice of certification and specification of
disallowance and surcharge against the former NHIA bosses did not follow the
necessary proceedings, rendering it null and void.
Other Cases
There
are other cases pending before other courts which are challenging the decision
of Mr. Domelevo to wrongly disallow and surcharge some government officials and
private companies.
They
argued that the methods used by the current Auditor General are unknown to
audit practices.
Prominent
among those cases is that of Zoomlion Ghana Limited which is challenging the
decision of the Auditor General to disallow and surcharge the private company
GH¢184 million over contracts it said it had executed for the NHIA through the
Ministry of Health (MoH).
Senior
Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo has also gone to court appealing against the decision
of the Auditor General to surcharge him and four others over $1 million paid to
Kroll Associates, a UK-based investigation firm.
The
appellants in their appeal aver that the Auditor General “committed a grave and
fundamental error of law in purporting to investigate and make findings of
breaches of the procurement law by the appellants when he had no such authority
at law.”
Concern
The Majority
Leader and Minister of
Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has equally expressed concern
about how Mr. Domelevo is running Audit Service in the media.
He
expressed worry about the way the Auditor General makes his report public even
before it is presented to Parliament.
“Increasingly, we are
finding situations where the Auditor General, after they finish with the work
before they transmit it to Parliament, will organise press conferences and take
some people to the cleaners,” he pointed out.
He,
therefore, called on the Auditor General to make its report to Parliament for it to exercise effectively its power over the
purse.
Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu
expressed reservations about instances when the report of the Auditor General
was presented to Parliament and it found out that the Auditor General got it
wrong and yet went out to make public its findings.
“In many instances when the report has come to Parliament we find out that many times the Auditor General has gotten it wrong and yet he has gone out there to scandalise and vilify personalities,” the Majority Leader said in Accra.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak
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