Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem has today raised concerns regarding misleading reporting by the Fiji Times and the delay in auditing financial statements by the Office of the Auditor General.
This is following an article in the newspaper last Friday which stated that the Auditor General in his 2019/2020 Audit Report on Statutory Authorities, Independent Body and Commissions said that the draft financial reports submitted by the Fijian Elections Office for audit were not of acceptable quality.
In a press conference today, Saneem says after this they had asked the Auditor General to clarify the matter with the Fiji Times because it is the Auditor General’s report which has been misquoted however he says this did not eventuate.
He says they contacted the Fiji Times to take responsibility and a front page article was then corrected on page 2 with a 2cm article.
Saneem says the final signed audit opinion of the Auditor General is completely opposite to what the front page of the Fiji Times read.
The Supervisor then read out the audit opinion by the Auditor General which said that he has audited the financial statements of the Fijian Elections Office, which comprise the statement of financial position as at 31st July 2018, the statement of comprehensive income and retained earnings, statement of cash flows for the year then ended, and notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies. It read that in the Auditor General’s opinion, the accompanying financial statements presents fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Fijian Elections Office as at 31st July 2018, and of its financial performance and its cash flows for the year then ended in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Entities (“IFRSs for SMEs”) (Independent Auditor’s Report, Fijian Elections Office, Report on the audit of the Financial Statements).
He says the newspaper article was not only misleading but was designed to specifically attack their credibility ahead of the 2022 General Elections.
Saneem says the financial statement of the Fijian Elections Office was prepared by KPMG which is one of the top 4 accounting firms in the world.
The Supervisor of Elections says their financial statements were prepared according to International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium Sized Entities.
Saneem adds the Fiji Times also got the dates for all the draft reports wrong.
He says there was only one error in the first draft where they wrote 2016 instead of 2017.
Saneem also says that the Office of the Auditor General took almost 9 months to finalize their audit.
He says most of the annual reports of institutions in Fiji are late because the Auditor General does not finish the audit process in time.
Saneem adds the Office of the Auditor General completed the audits for year 2017 and 2018 this year.
When questioned by Legend FM News on some of the audit points raised by the Office of the Auditor General in the 2019 - 2020 Audit Report on Statutory Authorities, Independent Body and Commissions, Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem says they they will answer the issues raised when they appear before the Public Accounts Committee.
The report which was tabled in Parliament noted that the Fijian Elections Office had engaged a Chartered Accounting Firm for the preparation of its annual statutory accounts despite employing a Financial Controller.
The report says despite this, the FEO submitted three versions of the draft 2018 accounts for audit in response to the errors noted in the financial statement.
The Office of the Auditor General says this indicates that the draft accounts initially submitted for audit were not of acceptable quality.
In response, the Fijian Elections Office has stated in the report that it is an independent office and has the right to decide on how the funds are utilized. The FEO says it had engaged the Chartered Accounting firm when the FEO had transited from Government Reporting to reporting under International Finance Reporting Standards for Small and Medium Entities.
The FEO says the contract was signed for 3 years to guide FEO in the preparation of Financial Statements and provide relevant guidelines.
The FEO says they verily believe that the Auditor General should recognize this as good practice as the FEO ensured that by engaging a highly reputable firm to supervise and prepare its accounts, especially when it migrated from one platform to another, protected the recording of finances and the interests of taxpayers.
The Fijian Elections Office says the accounts were prepared professionally and have assisted the FEO Finance team to take over a well setup machinery from the international firm.
The audit report also highlighted non compliance to Donor Agreement. It says they noted that the FEO did not submit the completion report to MFAT as required in the Grant Funding Agreement by the required timeline.
In it’s response, the FEO agreed with the recommendation to comply with the funding agreement and submit a report.
Another matter raised was the absence of Risk Management Policy and Risk Register.
The FEO has indicated that it has noted the recommendation to develop a risk management policy and disaster recovery plan and further explained that the office has only been operational for the last 4 years and has been continuously building and developing its organizational policies and processes.
It says in some areas, the FEO has had to wait for the establishment or creation of the base processes first before devising more comprehensive overlying frameworks.
The FEO says Risk Management, aversion and handing policy has been a policy that has been work in progress for the FEO.
The audit report also says it is imperative that the FEO has fully competent staff to deal with tax matters.
It says the audit noted that the Office was audited by Fiji Revenue Customs Services for VAT and a discrepancy of $44,630 was noted by the audit team.
The Auditor General’s Report says the discrepancy noted attracts an audit penalty in accordance with Section 46 of the Tax Administration Act 2009 which could go up to 75 percent if the Office is unable to defend itself successfully.
In response in the report, the FEO agreed with the recommendation from audit and has implemented the same from 2019 and is submitting VAT Returns on a monthly basis however, there was shortfall of funds which led to late payment of VAT.
When questioned by Legend FM News, Auditor General, Ajay Nand says the recent Auditor General’s Reports to Parliament has been referred by the Speaker to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
Nand says the Office of the Auditor General will not be issuing any statements on them.
We have also sent questions to the Fiji Times. They are yet to respond.
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