Why I see PAC interviews as a talking shop

Malawi my beloved country has never ceased to amaze me. Many times I have likened what goes on around the country to some big stage or soap operas where actors and actresses take turns to entertain the masses.

Simply put, there is lack of seriousness in handling many crucial issues. We focus more on talking yet very little on action. This is usually visible whenever there is a big scandal, especially relating to corruption or otherwise involving influential persons in society, when suddenly there is a smokescreen to divert the attention.

The situation is no different either this time around in the wake of the Capital Hill cashgate. Suddenly, everyone wants to be an expert in financial investigations, auditing and what have you.

In the same breadth, Members of Parliament (MPs) under the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament have joined the fray, purportedly to establish what happened for civil servants to freely plunder billions of kwacha in public resources through abuse of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis), the government electronic payment system introduced in 2005.

Currently, a team of forensic auditors/experts from the United Kingdom alongside our own National Audit Office (NAO) are on the ground carrying out a forensic audit.

Technically, a forensic audit refers to an examination and evaluation of an organisation’s or individual’s financial information for use, mostly as evidence in court. In other words, a forensic audit is more scientific as it analyses several traces of evidence, including finger prints.

What did we see later despite this technical exercise being underway? PAC came on the scene summoning public officers to explain “what they know” about the genesis of the cashgate and why they could not smell a rat in the course of the abuse.

Really? PAC is a well meaning committee of Parliament I have always respected but, on this one, I find the whole PAC affair to be a talking shop which, at the end of the day, will yield nothing tangible.

Why not leave the forensic auditors to undertake their assignment and then pick issues up from the audit report to query responsible controlling officers.

If media reports from the PAC cashgate hearings are anything to go by, then, events of late last week and early this week put into question the objective of the hearings being sponsored by taxpayers, including yours truly.

For example, why should PAC use “hearsay evidence”, as lawyers would put it in court, to query personalities such as former secretary to the Treasury Ranson Mwadiwa, Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) governor Charles Chuka and Bankers Association of Malawi (BAM) president William Chatsala and their teams?

Here, I am referring to the much-talked about encashment of businessperson Oswald Lutepo’s K1.2 billion under International Procurement System (IPS) over a counter of a bank? I am not privy to the exact wording of the questions from PAC, but from Chatsala’s response on how banks could encash such a cheque, with due respect to the PAC members, one gets a picture of a poor question from an ill-prepared interviewer or investigator.

Isn’t it common knowledge that upon presenting a third-party cheque over-the-counter, the commercial bank would verify signatures, cheque number and authenticity of other features, sometimes with the drawer (account holder)? And if the account holder says “yes”, do you really expect the bank not to release the money?

A similar question was asked to Chuka who told PAC that no government cheque was cashed at RBM. The governor said the encashment happened at a commercial bank.

Now, Chuka’s interview or “summons” preceded those for Chatsala and his BAM team. Given Chuka’s response and amid all the “rumour-mongering” about where Lutepo’s cheque was cashed, I would have expected PAC to trace the image of the cheque in question, using its privileges, through the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and see where, meaning which bank, the cheque was encashed. End of story. Usually, cashed cheques bear stamps of the bank they have been encashed; hence, you do not need to summon a whole central bank governor or BAM president to explain that.

It is in human nature to push the blame and refuse responsibility, but, honestly, from most of the responses coming from the PAC cashgate interviews, one gets an impression the members were/are either ill-prepared or have little or no knowledge of public finance management systems, let alone basic audit/investigation skills.

This is why, at the end of the day, one could see that Chatsala, Mwadiwa, Chuka and other experts ended up “lecturing” to the MPs and, as expected, they got overwhelmed and impressed.

So, what’s next after the cashgate talking shop?