Pink sheets short by 25 % after KPMG audit - Ato Dadzie

The spokesperson for the first and third respondents in the election petition case, Nana Ato Dadzie, has said the number of election record slips (pink sheets) purportedly tendered in evidence by the petitioners has dropped by 25 percent after an audit by KPMG.

The petitioners have always insisted they tendered 11,842 pink sheets, based upon which they are seeking the Supreme Court to overturn the presidential results of the 2012 elections.

The respondents, on the other hand, have always insisted in court that they received far less than the number touted by the petitioners.

International accounting firm, KPMG was invited to audit the sheets at the instance of Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, Lead Counsel for the governing National Democratic Congress, which is the third respondent in the case.

The Daily Guide Newspaper reported a few weeks ago that 13,900 pink sheets were counted by KPMG after its audit.

The respondents demanded an explanation as to how the number far exceeded the 11, 842 the petitioners insist they tendered.

Their demand for explanations followed an earlier threat to boycott the auditing on suspicion that seven alien ballot boxes stuffed with pink sheets were smuggled into the court’s registry by the petitioners to shore up the numbers to make up for the deficit.

The court later ruled that KPMG should use the President of the Bench’s pack of pink sheets to cross-check those audited at the registry.

Speaking to Journalists after Wednesday’s hearing, Nana Ato Dadzie said: “…We all do know, both sides, we all do know that the KPMG figures are very clear; [they] are coming out which will show that, yes, our position is fairly correct that we’ve not been given more than 9000 and that in any case, what has been given out to the Judges couldn’t probably have been more than 10,000 or whatever it is”.

He noted that: “If they say that they are going to annul 11,180 of our pink sheets, translating into 4.6 million, now that the thing has dropped by almost 2000 or whatever or at least their claim has dropped by almost 25 percent, are they going to ask that the Court should still annul those figures?”