AG arrested and charged

The National National

By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
Auditor-General Philip Nauga has been arrested and charged with three counts of misappropriating of about K250,000, National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate director Chief Superintendent Matthew Damaru says.
Nauga, he said, allegedly awarded two contracts without calling for public tender.
“He was arrested on Tuesday and is currently detained at the Boroko Police Station. He will have to apply to the National Court for bail,” Damaru said.
He said Nauga, 55, from Boregaina village in Rigo, Central, was charged after two contracts were awarded to a company to conduct audit inspection on the Aitape district services improvement programme books from Jan 1 to Dec 31 in 2012.
The same company was allegedly contracted to audit the books of the Mendi district services improvement programme from Jan1 to Sept 1, also in 2012.
Damaru said that the auditor-general supply and tenders board chaired by Nauga convened a meeting to approve and award the tender to the company.
The approval was allegedly done without a tender brief (note to tender), without any tender from the company concerned and without an evaluation report from the Secretariat of the Auditor-General’s Office as was the standard procedure, Damaru said.
The contract agreement for the two DSIP audit investigations was allegedly signed on the same day as the date of the invoice submitted to the office of the auditor-general, which was a record processing time.
Normal tender process was allegedly not complied with and certificate of inexpediency (COI) was not issued in these two contracts which were in breach of the Public Finance Management Act, the fraud office said.
The payment of K247,500 was made in one cheque to the company concerned on June 21, 2013.
Despite the cheque received by the company to do investigations, no audit was carried out in the Aitape and Mendi DSIP books. The contract agreement was allegedly signed between Nauga and the principal of the company, a former employee of the Auditor-General’s Office, the fraud office said.