By: Binta Jaiteh
Accord Associates Audit The Gambia has discovered a D9M fraud at the Gambia Telecommunication Company(GAMTEL), involving staff from the company’s customer care department. This was revealed on Wednesday during thesession of the National Assembly Committee on Public Enterprises Committee (PEC) on GAMTEL’s management letter for 2021.
Accord Associates Audit said following its review of the fraud case file at GAMTEL, it was indicated that the company has lost D9M.
Auditors said further inquiries into the matter gave them the understanding that the fraud centered around corporate customers, who were not paying in cash but through chequesor direct bank transfers.
Accord Associates revealed that when corporate customers paid for the services provided by Gamtel, the staff involved in the fraud would arrange for them to be credited with an amount less than what they had to pay and the difference would then be credited to other alleged customers’ accounts. The suspects would then go to the other alleged customers and collect cash from them, meaning these other customers wouldnot pay Gamtel for the services provided, it added.
The auditors said they were not provided with a list of these alleged customers who have been giving cash to the staff involved in the fraud.
“We also noted that for the amount involved to accumulate to D9M, the fraudulent activities must have been going on for a long time. This also signifies that the internal controls in place to prevent and detect this kind of fraud have failed. There is no adequate segregation of duties as one staff should not have been able to carry out this kind of fraud and cover it for a long time,” the auditors noted.
“The managers and supervisors have not fulfilled their managerial and supervisory roles because these activities should have been quickly detected during reviews and reconciliations. It means adequate verifications were not done on the work of people within the company.”
Accord Associates said that customers, who have been allegedly giving cash to the staff involved in the fraud, should have been investigated as “they were part of the fraud scheme because they have not paid for the services provided by Gamtel in the right manner and potentially they have not paid the right amounts”.
PEC chairperson Lamin J. Sanneh recommended GAMTEL provide a report from the disciplinary committee with regards to the hearing on the D9M fraud case, saying the committee was in urgent need of documents to draft its resolutions.
The management of GAMTEL has assured PEC that it will provide it with the documents.
