As MOF Director Of Foreign Debt Confesses… Parliament Clears Gento Group Of Double Payment

The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has cleared Gento Group of Companies of allegations of double payment made to the company as indicated in the 2022 Audit Report.
This clarification was made before the Committee headed by the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh in the presence of SLRA, RMFA, Ministry of Finance represented by the Director of Foreign Debts, the Media and members of the public.
During the query, the Director of Foreign Debt at the Ministry of Finance, Kemokai Fatoma was bold to state before the Committee that it was a typographic mistake that he made and presented documents of the correct payment that was made to the Committee.
The contract between the company and the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA) under review is said to be estimated at the value of Forty-Two Million Seven Hundred and Eighty-Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty-Seven United States dollars (USD42,782,727), out of which an amount totaling Thirty-Nine Million Six Hundred and Seventy-Six Thousand Three Hundred and Fourteen United States dollars (USD39,676,314) was paid to the contractor with an amount of Three Million One Hundred and Six Thousand Four Hundred and Thirteen United States dollars (USD3,106,413) remaining.
But the auditors observed certain discrepancies in the payment process in that based on pieces of communication the company and RMFA an Interim Payment Certificate (IPC1A) valued at USD5,459,499.26 equivalent to Le71,281,565 was issued in 2018 due to delayed payment of IPC 1 as prescribed in Clause 60.10 of the contract agreement.
The controversy is, therefore, an observation by the auditors that RMFA had already made payment for IPC 1 in 2016.
However, members of the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament after careful and thorough screening of Kemokai Fatoma, eventually established that Gento Group of Companies is not complicit.
Findings revealed that from 2016 to 2018, Gento Group of Companies was actively engaged in the road works but it came to a halt when the government changed. Upon the resumption of work later, the company applied for Certificate 1A for the work done from 2016 to 2018, but unfortunately, the Director of Foreign Debts at the Finance of Ministry mistakenly issued a document marked Payment Certificate 1 instead of 1A which the auditors picked up and reported in the 2022 Audit Report, especially as Mr. Fatoma failed to provide the necessary documents to the auditors for which he stands fined the sum of NLe5,000.