During a probing into the 2022 Auditor General’s Report in the House of Parliament it was revealed that there are a lot of financial discrepancies at the Sierra Leone Commercial Bank (SLCB).
Although some of the discrepancies resulted from parliament, there were also others including corporate loans and overdrafts without supporting documents.
The deputy auditor general, M. Lansana, said they observed that loans were granted by SLCB without following best practice, referencing parliamentary loans.
He said the loans were granted by the bank without request approvals and invoices, adding that there weren’t any receipts in the files.
For others, Mr. Lansana said, though they contained invoices, they were not serially numbered.
The deputy auditor general continued that they also noted that employer guarantee and recommendations from the Office of the Clerk of Parliament were not seen in the files.
Deliberating on corporate loans, Mr. Lansana said they sampled fifteen (15) corporate loans and discovered that there were no valuation forms, no pictorial evidence, no insurance cover, no audit cover and no updated Board approval and regulation.
Similarly, he said the audit team discovered that thirty-seven (37) staff loans were granted by the bank, but there were no application forms, missing credit assessments and no legal mortgage agreement.
He disclosed that in some instances, they were not registered and stamped, and the insurance coverage did not cover the name of the bank.
In addition, the report disclosed that there was no proof of the duplicate keys for car loans at the bank and that the end of service benefits payable or due was lower than the loan being granted.
Mr. Lansana said they discovered that there were also overdrafts at the bank with no supporting documents.
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Parliament, Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, described SLCB’s action as a total violation of the bank’s financial guidelines.
Meanwhile, the SLCB will soon appear before the committee for more scrutinising.