Registrar of Political Parties, Mohammed Saneem says the National Federation Party has complied with the directives to submit audited financial statements for 2018 after it was found that the earlier report submitted by the Party failed to comply with the law.
Saneem says it has been noted the Auditor, Naiveli & Co. have issued a qualified report for the 2018 financial statements highlighting that they were not able to carry out satisfactory audit verification of the recording of income from fundraising and donations.
He says the Auditor also states that there were a significant amount of cheque withdrawals which lacked sufficient independent source documents as satisfactory audit evidence.
Saneem says the Registrar will make further enquiries on the same in the coming week.
Meanwhile, National Federation Party Leader, Professor Biman Prasad says Saneem has selectively chosen to highlight the auditor’s basis for qualified opinion and has not highlighted the auditor’s qualified opinion.
He says the basis for qualified opinion does not give a true picture of what the auditor has highlighted.
Prasad says the auditor in the qualified opinion has highlighted that the accompanying financial statements present fairly, in all material aspects, of the financial position of the Party and the financial performance and cash flows of the Party as at 31 December 2018 for the year then ended in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium Enterprises.
In the basis for qualified opinion, the auditor has highlighted that due to the nature of the transactions inherent in any political party, the completeness of contributions and other income and expenses is not susceptible to satisfactory audit verification and accordingly, the evidence available to them regarding income, their audit procedures with respect to income from fundraising and donations had to be restricted to the amounts recorded in the financial records and they therefore were unable to express an opinion whether income obtained from these sources is complete.
