Mr Karamba Touray made this disclosure to the public accounts and public enterprises committees of the National Assembly, while presenting a audited report of Nedi’s finances from January 2009 to December 2012.
He said: “Our review of documents and analysis of lodgments made to the bank showed unaccounted revenue of D63, 795 in respect of loan recovered and sale of loan forms vendors. We noted that Nedi withdrew D1,193,760 and out of this spent D243,200 for various activities during the period 16 October 2009 to 24 December 2012. The balance of D950,560 was un-accounted for.”
He added that procurement of D2,100,000 were made without adherence to the Gambia Public Procurement Regulations.
Touray continued: “As per the individual ledgers presented for audit examination, Nedi issued a total loan of D4,909,180 for the period under review and made recoveries of only D276,600, leaving an outstanding balance of D4,632,580.
“The security put in place by Nedi was found to be inadequate because personal guarantor only appendix his/her signature on the loan forms without any form of collateral, which makes loan recoveries difficult in the event vendors default in repaying their loans.”
Auditor General stated that the payments without vouchers revealed that some payments voucher totaling to D1,918,500 were not signed by the authorising officer while the authenticity of the payments could not be established.
He revealed further: “An outstanding loan of D176,400 was given to some Nedi staff and National Sports Council, but no repayment action was taken up to the time of completing our audit.
“We noted that imprest totaling to D80,500 given to various persons were not retired and there is a risk that the monies could be misappropriated or misused.
“Nedi provides loans to small business and during the period under review, Nedi issued a loan of D3,361,500 to a number of persons. We also noted that there were no individual loan ledger maintained by Nedi for these persons giving the loans issued out, repaid and outstanding balances so as a result, we were unable to determine how much loan was issued to each person; how much was repaid; and their respective outstanding balances.”
He cited an instance in which a series of loans where disbursed to a Modou Kebbeh for the opening of a restaurant in Basse.
“We were informed by NEDI’s management that the restaurant ceased to exist and the vendor left for the United States unceremoniously in 2010/2011. The loan taken by Modou Kebbeh from June 2010 to September 2010 amounts to a total to D305,000. I was informed that the officials of Nedi seized some items at the restaurant after the departure of the vendor to the USA.”
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