By Hassan Osman Kargbo

In a bid to curtail corruption and mismanagement of public funds in all Ministers, Departments and Agencies in the country, the Audit Service Sierra Leone has issued out its Report for the 2022 annual year where the report captured the dubious activities of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). 

One of the activities of the FIU is to receive information about financial transactions from different reporting entities in the country but the Audit report has clearly showed that FIU are doing otherwise.According to the Audit report, FIU failed to submit their activities plains for Audit and it’s not appropriate for a Unit like the FIU. The Report stated that: A strategic plan detailing how the Unit intends to track its yearly progress toward achieving its goals and objectives in relation to combating money laundering, terrorism financing and illicit financial flows was not submitted for audit inspection. As a result, we could not ascertain how the Unit planned to tackle the above issues on a yearly basis in relation to its long-term plans. ​The above statement from the Audit report clearly shows that the FIU are in dubious activities and they failed to send documents or present documents to the Audit Service Sierra Leone for proper Auditing.

The Audit noted that they observed withholding taxes amounting to SLE6,688 were not deducted and paid to the NRA, and the Audit response that they are very much compliant with tax deduction as that are fully aware that government activities including the FIU activities are been financed from tax revenue. The payment in question is an advance payment they normally deducted withholding tax when making the final payment. The 5.5% deduction is calculated on the contract amount.

As at 31st December 2022, the outstanding amount was not paid due to reconciliation between FIU and the supplier. This has also indicated that FIU are really engaging in misappropriation of public office.

The report furthered that FIU submitted an outdated strategic plan to Audit which is not good for the name of the institution. It stated that strategic plan covering 2009-2014 was submitted during the verification exercise. However, Audit consider those strategic plan outdated and there is a need for it to be updated to include emerging issues and how the Unit plans to address those issues.

According to the report, the database showing the undermentioned information was not submitted for audit inspection includes: 1 Reports in respect of foreign transfers submitted to the Unit by reporting financial institutions. 2 Details of fines issued, accounts suspended and other incidental reports developed by the Unit.​

On the database issues, the Auditor commented that ‘We were given a tour of how the database is operated by the IT Manager of the Unit. No data was given to the team in any form due to the claims in the Management’s response above. As a result, we still could not perform any work on the database to reconcile actions taken by the Unit on the database of foreign transfers.’ It reads.