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| Sports |
| Malawi Olympics association members got K2.4 million in illegal loans —Audit |
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by
Leonard Sharra, 25 March 2005
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13:25:36
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The draft audit report on Olympic and Commonwealth Games Association of Malawi (Ocgam) operations says K2,471,902 (about $22,200) was granted to members of the association’s executive board in the form of loans. The reports further says K203,570.43 of the amount has not been recovered.
Says the report: “The constitution of Ocgam does not provide for the granting of loans to executive members of the board. However, a review of payment transactions disclosed that the association was granting loans to members of the board and the recoveries were made without charging interest on the loans.
“It was observed that between January and December 2004, a sum of K2,471,902. was granted to executive members free of interest and as at the date of the audit, a sum of K203,570.43 was still outstanding,” says the report.
It recommends against the granting of loans to executive members.
“Management is advised that members of the executive board are not the employees of the association and as such it is improper to grant loans to them since the constitution is silent on the issuing of loans to executive members,” recommends the report.
It is further alleges that executive member Floriano Massah did not reimburse a K108,000 amount he was paid after being nominated to attend a Sports Medicine course abroad despite being stopped from travelling by Sports Council.
“The trip was cancelled by Sports Council because, according to the Council, Mr Massah’s profession had nothing to do with issues concerning medicine,” says the report.
But Massah, who according to the report was also assigned to purchase sports equipment during the course, refused to comment on the allegation on Thursday.
However, a member of the Ocgam board, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed in an interview that the board decided to forfeit the amount because of the manner Massa was stopped from attending the course.
“A board meeting decided against recovering the money from Mr Massa because of the manner he was stopped from traveling. The amount he was supposed to pay back was even much less than the K108,000 because he spent two nights in Blantyre and incurred a number of expenses before the trip.
“He was stopped from traveling by council right at the airport,” said the board member.
Treasurer Lawrence Arthur said: “We had a meeting with the government auditors on Monday and they are satisfied. We just need to put some systems in place.
“But the picture being presented here is like I and Mr Gwaza are thieves. It’s like we were cashing cheques for personal use. According to the systems we have, we, the signatories have to cash some cheques so that we have ready cash when there is need for immediate payments,” said Arthur.
On the issuing of loans and other discrepancies pointed out by the auditors, Arthur said the board had inherited a system that was being applied by the old committee.
“The auditors have uncovered nothing. They just want us to change our systems and for your information, we inherited the systems from our predecessors. It’s not like myself and Gwaza came up with these systems,” said Arthur.
An insider told Nation Online that about K61,000 from the outstanding balance of K203,570.43 was left by a member of the previous board.
Ocgam president Jerome Waluza refused to comment.
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