The recently released Forensic Audit Report by the Interim Transitional Governance Committee (ITGC) of the main opposition All Peoples Congress Party (APC) has revealed that over Le8.5 billion was squandered by the party’s past executive.

On 28 April 2022, the High Court of Sierra Leone passed a judgement in a case between Alfred Peter Conteh and the Leadership of the All-People’s Congress (APC) political Party (Dr Ernest Bai Koroma, Alhaji Amb. Dr Osman Foday Yansaneh), the APC and the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC). In that judgment an order was given for the establishment of an Interim Transition Governance Committee (ITGC) which “shall have overall responsibility for manning the affairs of the Party until the National Delegates Conference (NDC) when their mandate would expire. One of the responsibilities of the ITGC was “The appointment of a national audit firm who are registered members of the Chartered Institute of Accountants Sierra Leone to carry out a forensic audit on the financial activities of the 3 Defendant APC party between October 2017 and 28 April 2022 within 14 days of their assumption of office.

In their executive summary in the audit report which was released on 16 December 2022, the ITGC stated that their overall conclusion is that the Party had weaknesses in management resulting in a deviation from its objectives and led to internal misunderstandings, adding that this also confirmed the weaknesses in financial management detailed in external audit reports over the years.

“The investigations reveal that Party membership was not well managed and this is evidenced and resulted in a derived difference of inflow for the period under review of approximately Le8,561,015,140.00 between the amount received by the Party’s bank totalling Le11,254,223,411.00 and the Party’s register totalling Le2,693,208,272.00,” the report revealed.

The Executive could be called upon to explain these inadequacies.