The other Cashgate conduit?
Price waterhouse Coopers (PwC) analysis and reconstruction of the Malawi Government’s cashbook shows that hundreds of millions of kwacha may have been siphoned from Capital Hill through duplicate cheque payments.
PwC was subcontracted by Germany to help the National Audit Office (NAO) to carry out an examination of public finances from January 1 2009 to December 31 2014.
The data analysis shows five examples of cheques reflected on banks statements with same cheque numbers, but processed on different dates.
The cheques’ records, according to the analysis, were extracted based on several filters which included, among others, flagging cheques with same numbers, amounts but with different transaction dates.
“We noted over 20 000 occurrences of duplicate cheque numbers in the analysis,” reads the analysis in part.
For instance, cheque number 025966 with an amount of K753 008 768.15 (US$1.7 million) shows two bank statement records with the same value and cheque number recorded on different days—December 27 2012 and January 22 2013.
Another cheque number 003685 with an amount of K3.2 million (US$7 111) indicates the transaction date as December 27 2012 on a bank statement received with the filename 0013006160078_20121201.txt.
The total value of the five cheques debited twice is about K758 728 768.15 (US$1.7 million), according to PwC data analysis.
An auditor speaking on condition of anonymity said the duplicate transactions could have been avoided through bank reconciliations which, in the case at hand, does not seem to have been taking place.
The submission came amid accusations that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration wanted to downplay the report ostensibly because part of the potential mismanagement may have happened under their watch with the late Bingu wa Mutharika as president.
