The Anti-Corruption commission (ACC) boss on Monday addressed media practitioners at their Gloucester Street office in Freetown on the 2020 Auditor General’s Report concerning the huge misappropriation of public funds.

The commissioner of the ACC, Francis Ben Kaifala Esq. informed the media that with regards to the Auditor General’s report 2020 which highlighted huge misappropriation of public funds, he added that the handlers of those state funds should provide proper explanation to his office but that is they fail, they stand the risk of spending Christmas in detention.

“Over the years we have forged a very friendly relationship with some of this Ministries, Department and Agencies and we have built on mutual trust with them, and they understand that we are merely doing our work as the Parliament delegated to us to fight corruption, but this does not stop us from doing what we have to do to achieve the same goal to ensure that we control corruption. So, we appreciate our counterpart the Public Accounts Committees, but more generally we salute Parliament for their support to their work, the ACC Commission told journalists.

According to lawyer Kaifala, from the 2019 report, the issue where not as compared to the 2020 report where thousands of issues have been highlighted.

According to him, it takes a year before the audit reports come out of the same way the audit report for 2020 is only coming out.

“If we start with the Presidency, it does not mean an issue in the local councils will not be looked into, and the fact that we take our work very seriously and so even now, which is the Christmas season, we have been combing through the most recent audit reports identifying issues that need to be activated,” he said.

According to Public Review Newspaper, he continued to state the issues that issues that have to do with councils and payment that were supposed to be paid will be looked into and those that have will be return to the Consolidate Revenue Funds (CRF) and that actions have been taken on the Audit Report and that the ACC will continue to take action as “we are not saying all the reports that have been brought out do not mean somebody has stolen, we have quite a number of non-disclosures of loan agreements, but somebody has to explain us what is happening and we want people particularly if they are listening to this report, to prepare themselves to give us a quick explanation if not, the Christmas  celebration will not be spend well,” he warned.

According to him, for Embassies and High Commissions, 51 issues were found while for ministries, department and agencies – 281 issues were found, whereas for public enterprises, commissions and donors of hundreds of projects – 635 issues were found.

He added that all these departments need investigation and if found guilty will face the full penalty of the law. He assured the Media that as a commissioner, he is going strong action on the Auditor General’s report.

He went on to state that, the constitution gives the President certain immunities which exclude him from any form of investigation while serving as president and that the president has been robust in the fight against corruption in Sierra Leone but that all those that are around him are not prone to such immunity.