The company yesterday presented its 2021 activity and financial report before the Public Enterprise Committee (PEC) of the National Assembly,
“During our audit, we noted that there was a fraud case involving staff from the Customer Care Department. During our review of the fraud case file, it has been indicated that the company had lost D9 million. Upon further enquiries, we understand that the fraud centred around the corporate customers. These customers did not pay in cash; they only paid by cheques or direct transfers,” auditors revealed.
“When corporate customers pay for the services provided by Gamtel, the staff involved in the fraud would arrange for these corporate customers to be credited with an amount less than what they have paid, and the difference would then be credited to other alleged customers' accounts,” the report revealed.
“The suspects would then go to those other alleged customers and collect cash from them. This means these other customers would not pay Gamtel for the services provided.”
However, it noted they have not been provided with a list of these alleged customers who have given cash to the staff involved in the fraud.
“We also noted that for the amount involved to accumulate to D9 million, the fraud activities must have been going on for a long time.
This also signifies that the internal controls in place to prevent and detect this kind of fraud have failed.”
They also observed that the GAMTEL TAWA, cumulative amount of D60,104,382.47 had been spent, a total revenue of D25,187,603.45 was realised from it.
“Based on cost benefit analysis, we observed that the cost incurred on the TAWA has been far more than the revenue by D34,916,779.”
“The TAWA project was estimated to complete within a span of two years but extended to seven years and yet to be completed. The cost expended on the project against the associated revenue revealed that the project is not a worthwhile investment. The performance of the project also reveals that there was no adequate cost benefit analysis undertaken prior to committing resources to this project,” auditors observed.
The chairman of the Public Enterprise Committee, Hon. Lamin J. Sanneh, said they had consulted within themselves as members of the committee and decided to adopt that report on conditions that are related to the request they have made in their engagements.
The committee thus tasked them to provide a report from the disciplinary committee with regard to the hearing of the nine million dalasi fraud.
The report was subsequently adopted by the committee.
