Auditor General Nancy Gathungu on Wednesday urged the Senate's Public and Investment Committee to invoke sanctions on county officers who fail to submit financial statements for audit on time.
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00:00in 2 or 3 weeks before the audit. They have been facilitated to do the audit in those 3 weeks.
00:05They cannot stay for 1 week, wasting time waiting for documents, because it means they only have 2 weeks
00:11to confirm those documents and prepare the whole report. And that's why you end up with the issues of
00:18documents are not provided, or there was no support, or there was expenditures were not accounted for.
00:25So my instructions, and you may find it different for 2024 audits, is pull out. And if we have to go back,
00:36it will be at the cost of the client, because I am also using taxpayers' funds. So all of you chair,
00:42everybody knows their roles and responsibilities, that the auditor relies on documents.
00:47The auditor does not audit on the web. You come, you give us your financial statements,
00:51you have expenditure components, you have revenue components, support that. And that should be
00:57advanced preparation, even before we go in, because the law says you should be audited.
01:02And there is an auditor who will come. It's not a matter of my auditor coming in and that's when
01:06we are discussing what you did. Every document should be available. So there has been late submission.
01:11And the law says there are sanctions and penalties for late submission, or delayed submission,
01:18or even misleading the auditor. You can invoke the public auditor, and you have the power and authority
01:24of the chair, of the members, to sanction those entities, where I have clearly indicated there are
01:30no documents, or there was no support, or there was no accountability.
01:35There should be no discussions, or back and forth, or we did, we shall, or now we'll bring,
01:40or people bringing truckloads or cartloads of documents at the level of committee hearings.
01:45Because what happens now is the committee reopens the audit. Hold on, Chair, an audit is at a certain
01:52point in time. I give you a report as of 30th of June, year 2022, year 2023, year 2024.
01:59Now, when we restart auditing, an audit now in 2025 maybe, it means now we go back,
02:06instead of finalising the audit you are now waiting for, the reports you are waiting for, we waste time
02:11now to go back to people who did not cooperate on time, we waste the time of the committee,
02:16we waste resources and the time of the auditor, instead of sanctioning that person so that
02:21for the current audit cycle, they are now cooperating with the auditor.
02:28So that is a decision that the committee needs to make, that how far back can you go.