I did not interfere, I only intervene - Chair of Audit service snubs Domelevo's claims

Board chairman of the Ghana Audit Service Prof. Edward Duah Agyemang has rubbished claims of interference made by the Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo.

The Auditor General has petitioned president Akufo-Addo claiming the board chair is seeking to take over procurement procedures and is directing staff at the service without due regards to him the boss.

In a petition, dated July 27, 2018 and addressed to President Akufo-Addo, Mr Domelevo wrote: " I wish to bring to your attention the unlawful interferences and violations of my constitutional mandate by the Board Chairman - Prof Edward Dua Agyeman and the Board of Ghana Audit Service and respectfully request for your intervention."

The 10-point letter, levelled several allegations against Prof. Dua Agyeman including “manipulating the procurement process”, “attempting to commission an audit”, “interfering with audit process” and “unlawful circulation of audit circulations”.

It cited an instance when he wrote to the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) for approval to do restricted tendering in accordance with Section 38 of the Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663).

Daniel Domelevo alleged, however, that the Board Chair instructed two of his subordinates- Johnson Akuamoah Asiedu; Deputy Auditor-General and Ebenezer Aglomasa, a Procurement Officer “to replace the approved firms with his choice” after approval was obtained from the PPA.

“This was done without my knowledge and without going back to the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) to change the list originally approved,” the letter stated and claimed that: “The Chairman admitted to the offense with the excuse that the law did not exist during his tenure of office as Auditor-General.

The Auditor-General also accused Prof. Dua Agyeman of holding a meeting with another Deputy Auditor-General, Blessed Baffuor-Atta and others, “to discuss the audit of MMDAs liabilities without my knowledge”. “The DAG showed me a letter inviting the Chairman in his capacity as the Chairman of the Audit Service Board to that meeting."

But according to Prof Duah Agyemang, he had already done an auditing of the public accounts as Auditor General before leaving the office in 2009 and did not understand why some auditors had gone back to audit those accounts.

“I called them to find out why they were going there to audit accounts from 2007 to 2015. But it turned out they were also going to audit some three contracts in 2017, so I asked them why they were doing that because the Auditor General was not in town,” he said.

He explained that was his reason for calling them and it had nothing to do with interfering with anything they were working on but rather “an intervention of what the CEO of NHIA came to tell me.”

In relation to part of the petition which claimed that Prof Dua took certain trips without recourse to the Board, he rather accused Daniel Domelevo of doing that.

“He travels without telling us and he keeps insisting that as far as he is concerned, he is not answerable to the Board and we thought that was wrong," he said. 

However, President Akufo-Addo has directed Nana Asante Bediatuo, his Executive Secretary, to probe a petition by Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelevo, accusing his Board Chair, Prof. Edward Dua-Agyeman of frustrating his work.

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