Corporate News
The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) headquarters in Nairobi. PHOTO | FILE
By DAVID HERBLING, hdavid@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
- The Communications Authority of Kenya has sent finance director Peris Nkonge and human resource director Juma Kandie on compulsory leave for purportedly refusing to provide information to the CA board audit committee.
- The move comes days after an internal report revealed that senior executives spent Sh307 million on travel allowances.
The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has
suspended two senior executives and ordered a fresh forensic audit into
the entire financial dealings of the cash-rich government regulatory
agency.
The move comes days after an internal report revealed that senior executives spent Sh307 million on travel allowances.
The telecoms regulator has sent finance director
Peris Nkonge and human resource director Juma Kandie on compulsory leave
for purportedly refusing to provide information to the CA board audit
committee.
CA director-general Francis Wangusi on Tuesday said
the two suspended directors will stay out until a new audit, to be
carried out by an external party, is finished.
“The two members of staff have been sent on
compulsory leave until the forensic audit is done. They were implicated
for refusing information to the board audit committee,” said Mr Wangusi
in an interview in his office.
“I have asked for a forensic audit. We have started
the procurement process. The request for proposals will be sent out by
end of the week,” he said.
Mr Wangusi said the external auditor will give an
“independent” picture of the authority, saying there was “malice” in the
report authored by the six-member board audit committee.
He said he expects the forensic audit to be
completed as soon as possible. The decision to hire an independent audit
firm had already been made by the audit sub-committee at a meeting held
on September 14, 2015 which also adopted the report on per diem
expenditure.
Forensic and investigative accounting firms such as
Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young,
KPMG, and Kroll are likely to battle it out for the lucrative tender
to audit books at CA.
The damning report revealed that staff at the
telecoms’ industry regulator last year made a total of 421 trips —both
local and overseas— to attend conferences, training, field visits and
workshops most of which were unaccounted for and deemed irrelevant.
Only 34 meeting reports out of the total were
availed for audit, contrary to CA’s requirements that a report be
submitted at the end of every travel, noted the auditors.
Mr Wangusi on Tuesday said a total of Sh134.1
million was spent on overseas travel allowances, with the rest going to
local travel.
The exposè on travel allowances at CA comes nine
months after a leaked internal report showed that board members had
pocketed Sh11.9 million in sitting allowances in the five months to
November and were yet to account for imprest amounting to Sh8.2 million.
On Tuesday, Mr Wangusi justified the trips saying they constituted training and global policy meetings
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