Anticorruption by Robert I. Rotberg

Author:Robert I. Rotberg [Rotberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Corruption; Anti-corruption; Corruption and anti-corruption; Corruption and anticorruption; Corruption Oxford; Corruption Very Short Introduction; Corruption VSI; Corruption What Everyone Needs to Know; Corruption Holmes; Corruption Fisman Golden; Bribery; Emoluments; Embezzlement; Ethical Universalism; Extortion; Fraud; Graft; Grand Corruption; Kickbacks; Kleptocracy; Nepotism; Petty Corruption; Rwanda, Singapore, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Chile, Hong Kong; New Zealand, Canada, Denmark; Norway; Sweden; Paul Kagame; Lee Kuan Yew; Lava Jato;
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

Auditors and Ombudspersons

Careful auditing, especially forensic auditing, can uncover likely instances of cheating by public officials for private gain. Just as the CICIG found “unexplained” expenditures and transfers in Guatemala’s health and social security administrations, so a contracted firm’s audit of Malawi’s ministerial accounts found much about which to be suspicious. Even routine audits, if done with an expectation of finding questionable, potentially fraudulent items on the books or expenditures against nonexisting budget lines, can disclose false tendering, all manner of likely graft, and even what looks like systemic corruption.

In properly run polities, auditors scrutinize each and every governmental operation. Even in the developed world, they examine documentation for contracts to ensure that authorized procedures and regulations are followed, and that nothing suspicious has occurred. Independent auditors that have free rein to examine every transaction, expenditure, supposed disbursement, and wire transfer can at least make the cost of individual grand corruption greater and the risks of discovery more intense. Certifying integrity in government (and business) is a key task for auditors, especially for auditors who know that they work in shady surroundings where high-level corruption is likely.

During the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone in 2015, for example, the country’s national auditor noted that millions of dollars that were needed to combat the epidemic had “gone missing,” much of the missing monies involving ministries that had “lost track” of donor funds meant to combat Ebola, and as a result, had caused reductions in the quality of service delivery in the health sector. Patients died.

South Africa’s auditors, to give another example, found in 2014 that its national government had “wasted” billions of rands (the local currency) and had made R26 billion (then US$2.6 million) in irregular expenditures, up by a third from the previous year. In a number of cities, key employees had fiddled contracts for infrastructural projects and supplies so as to benefit themselves. The auditor general condemned governmental business conducted “outside the controlled environment.”4

In Kenya, the auditor general found in 2015 that only 26 percent of the government’s financial statements were accurate; 16 percent were “misleading.” The auditor general in a subsequent year noticed that the government could not account for a large proportion of its annual revenues, that the police were paying for empty offices, and that the army was buying military vehicles that were not operable. The sum of $2 billion had been transferred illegally by officers to an offshore bank.

Auditors everywhere are able to provide one more check on the rent-seeking impulses of public servants, just as they can within multinational enterprises. But in many of the more fragile countries worldwide, especially in countries prone to corrupt behavior by politicians, auditors general are limited by statute from disclosing their routine or other findings to the public. In most cases, the reports of auditors general are not produced in a timely fashion, and are delivered to the relevant parliament or legislative chamber. In controversial cases, therefore, inconvenient findings are often buried by the parliamentary committee responsible for oversight.

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