The Deputy Speaker of the House of Parliament, Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, has urged the Sierra Leone Commercial Bank (SLCB) to explain what led to the bank losing Le61.6 billion thereby depriving the government of Sierra Leone of dividends.
Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh is the deputy Speaker and the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in the House of Parliament that is responsible for and has the mandate to hold government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) accountable.
Hon. Tawa Conteh asked the SLCB Director of Finance to vividly explain what led to the loss of the above-mentioned sum at the bank.
During the proceeding, the committee discovered that the trail balance did not agree with the schedule at the bank.
Responding, the Director of Finance at SLCB admitted that there the trail balance did not agree with the schedule which according to him led to miss-posting and wrong posting of Le1 billion to the National Revenue Authority (NRA) account.
A representative from the NRA admitted that indeed they were aware of the miss-posting into their account.
He said when they wrote a letter to the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) to return the money, the central bank in response, demanded and requested for Le30 million for them to return the money.
He said the miss-posting was done during the redenomination of the leone, saying that instead of posting one million leones (Le1,000,000) they mistakenly posted one billion new leones (NLe1,000,000,000).
Having heard both sides of the explanation, the deputy speaker suggested to meet both parties to find out how the miss-posting was done and what led to the loss of Le61.6 billion.
The deputy opposition leader, Hon. Aaron Aruna Koroma, argued that having heard both parties’ responses, there was nothing like a mistake regarding wrong posting.