Some offices withhold documents, no protection for staff: Auditor General

Some government offices and companies withhold documents required for audit purposes, and employees representing the Auditor General's Office have no legal protection, the office revealed today.

Speaking at the public accounts committee of the parliament today, Legal Counsel at the Auditor General's Office Mohamed Naseem said that there are many reasons why preparation of audit reports get delayed. This includes intimidation of Audit Office employees and refusal to provide documents by institutions, he explained.

When documents are requested from some offices, they claim that they are legally confidential, with the Audit Office being the first place the documents are withheld from, he further added. Due to this, the institutions are not audited.

"Even though documents are hidden from us, there are [cases] where the documents have gone to the corner shops even," Naseem said.

He gave the example of FENAKA, which currently faces multiple corruption allegations, and has not provided any documents to the Audit Office since 2021.

However, Naseem said that he does not believe any government office can withhold documents from the Auditor General's Office.

Auditor General Hussain Niyazi also spoke at the meeting and pointed out that the issue is not just a legal one, but also the practices of the management in these institutions. Although some institutions comply, there are challenges in conducting audits of some institutions due to difficulty in accessing information, he added.

"We are conducting an audit of Aasandha. It is a performance audit. However, we require patient data from it to understand and analyse whether someone received unnecessary treatments or if undue events took place," he detailed.

Auditor General's Office also highlighted that although employees of independent institutions are protected by law during their official activities, employees of the Audit Office receive no such protection.

"Other laws state that there should be no legal intimidation for what is done while performing official duties. However our law has no such provision," an official of the office pointed out.

During the meeting, it was also highlighted that some employees received threats and were intimidated via phone calls. Some even had their property damaged, Naseem said. Some incidents were also escalated to Maldives Police Service during the MMPRC investigation, he revealed.

Niyazi said that if institutions interpret the law in such a way, the parliament should find a solution for the issue even if it means including additional clauses to the law.