Missing Billions At Sierra Leone Commercial Bank …Auditor Exposes Flawed Procurement

Sierra Leone’s Oldest Fully Indigenous Bank, Sierra Leone Commercial Bank has been implicated in procurement fraud running into billions of Leones and Millions of dollars for which the esteemed financial institution is unable to provide better explanation.
One of the Procurement flaws is the Procurement of 2024 Calendars and Diaries which cost NLe832, 219.25
“From a review of the procurement documents, we observed the following: Payment slips and bid purchase register were not sighted in the file during the review, during our review we observed that bid security submitted by the bidders were not sighted in file during the review despite them being deemed responsive in the evaluation report,” the Audit captured.
The report furthered that Individual evaluation sheets completed by the five members of the evaluation committee were not sighted in the file during the review, Bidding documents submitted by the various bidders were not sighted in the file, Minutes of the bid opening report was also not sighted in file, Supplier acceptance letter and signed contract document was also not sighted.
“Copy of the supplier advance payment guarantee and performance bond was also not sighted. Copy of the supplier delivery note and invoice was also not sighted. Copy of the goods receive note was also not sighted. The name of the supplier was not captured in the approved supplier database,” it stated.
Procurement for the Supply of 51 Note Counting Machine at the cost NLe1,348950 was also highlighted by the report for which there was no minutes of the procurement committee in which the bidding document was approved.
That Several discrepancies between the date in which the bidding document was issued by the SLCB (8th May 2023 and recorded on the bid issued register on 8th April 2023) and that the evaluation report stated that the bid was submitted on 10th May 2023 at 12:00 noon GMT but the bid submission register signed by the bidder stated that the bid was submitted on 10th April 2023 at 14:21 GMT.
The individual evaluation sheets completed by members of the evaluation committee were not
sighted.
That Despite restricted bidding was the approved procurement souring method, bid was only solicited from just one bidder rather than a minimum of five as stipulated in section 42 (2) of the Public Procurement Act, 2016.
That The integrity pact form was not completed by both the SLCB and Break Through Technologies and that Letter of notification of award was also not sighted and that the declaration of conflict-of-interest form was not completed by members of the procurement committee and technical evaluation committee.
“The bidding document was issued for only two days from 8th to 10th May 2023, without any justification for such as shorter protracted period as stipulated in the Public Procurement Act, 2016,” the report maintained.
Similar issues were also recorded and exposed for the procurement of the Bank’s imported letter head which cost Le368M, the procurement and implementation of Switch and Card Management Systems and Mobile application services cost over $2.5M, procurement for the supply of 650KVA Generator for the head office cost over $134,000 or correspondingly 3 Billion Leones; Procurement for consultancy service for the installation of the 650 KVA Gen at the head office for over $17,000 and the Procurement of Port Cisco 2960 Poe switch for 174m and for over 1.5M procurement for the construction of a building at Adonkia
Detail on this in subsequent publications.