By Mama A. Touray
Deputy Lead Counsel, Patrick Gomez on Monday told the former CEO of Basse Area Council that what was spent on the finance office was three times more than what was spent on development in 2019.
Counsel Gomez said this after the commission detected that the Basse Area Council spent more money on the development of the offices than they spent on development issues as the spending on the finance unit alone increased to over 4 Million in 2019.
The Deputy Lead Counsel Patrick Gomez stated that the accounts of the Basse Area Council showed that they have been spending huge in their offices and little or nothing on development.
Mr Touray disclosed that the annual cost for salary is around D7 Million and that they spent D1.4 Million on transportation and D2 Million alone for the Finance Department.
He said in reality, the development should be more than the recurrent expenditures but was quick to say that the situation at the Basse Area Council was not normal.
However, the Deputy Lead Counsel provided the witness with the vouchers ex-Finance Director Lamin Suso tendered before the Commission. Suso already informed the Commission that those vouchers should be discarded since he already discredited them.
The Commission noted that the vouchers do not meet the requirements as they have several discrepancies in terms of date, voucher numbers, signatures, and information.
The witness said some of the vouchers were signed by the director of finance, “The signature on the column I was supposed to sign is not my signature. The signature was forged.”
Former CEO Touray said the reason he did not sign some of those vouchers was because the finance unit could not justify those claims for payment.
Furthermore, the compliance auditors from GPPA flagged that during one of their exit meetings after carrying out the audit of the Basse Area Council procurement activities, when asked whether he reported the matter to the general council, the former CEO Ousman Touray said he did not report the matter to the general council for decision to be taken.
Mr. Touray insisted that Lamin Suso used to forge his signature to sign on vouchers and Patrick Gomez told him “To me you created the Finance Director” which he admitted.
