Audit report indicts NHIS man

Fresh evidence in the hands of the Financial Intelligence (FI) points to a possible misappropriation of the seed money of ¢300,000,000 (three hundred million Cedis), an equivalent of GH¢30,000.00, which was transferred to the Ketu District Assembly in August 2003 to establish the Health Insurance Scheme in that district.

An audit query sent to the District Assembly by Baffuor Awuah and Associates, an auditing firm, in January 2006 made a number of worrying remarks about how the then Scheme Manager for the district, Raymond Avinu and the scheme Accountant handled the book keeping procedure on the spending of the seed money.

It noted that “apart from the Payment Vouchers (PVs) that were maintained as evidence of the disbursements of the seed money, no proper books of accounts were maintained on the seed money”.

The auditors also observed that PVs had not been retired; and “No evidence of how funds were released for Health Insurance related activities have been disbursed”. They noted for example that there were no official receipts and supporting documents on these spending.

Baffuor Awuah and Associates attributed these irregularities to the weakness of the board in their duties as they noted that the board did not have the three categories of internal controls namely Directive, Preventive and Detective controls available.

The auditors recommended that the District Assembly took bold steps to ensure that all hanging PVs were retired and persons found culpable should be made to refund the monies involved if possible.

However this paper leant that before the District Finance Officer could take action on the recommendations, he was transferred to another district, with Mr. Raymond Avinu doing all he could to cover-up his tracks.

There is also some evidence available of how Mr. Avinu may have abused his office. A letter of introduction he wrote for a lady named Emilia Ivy Hadzide purporting she was an employee of the scheme is just one of such acts of indiscretion on the part of the then District Scheme Manager.

A letter dated September 16,2005, under the heading NOMINATION OF MS EMILIA IVY HADZIDE FOR THE NETHERLANDS FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME, is one of such cases of indiscretion, as the same lady also admitted she had been supplying goods to the scheme in the district.

Whereas the letter stated that the Ms Hadzide took appointment at the Ketu District Health Insurance Scheme since 2004, the lady categorically denied ever being an employee of the scheme.

“Go and check from their accounts whether I was ever on their pay roll”, was what she told this reporter.

Justifying the reason for the letter to the Netherlands embassy purporting her eligible for such assistance, she explained that she had been a voluntary worker for the scheme while at the same time supplying goods to the same entity.

It is therefore unclear which Ketu District Health Insurance Scheme Mr. Avinu referred to in that letter.

When this paper contacted Mr. Avinu to respond to the issues, he only stated that the audit query had been dealt with appropriately and all subsequent audit exercises had given the scheme a clean bill of health.

He however declined any further comments on the matter.

It can be recalled that this same man was reported to have engaged in a procurement scandal when he was an Officer at the Ketu District office.

Source: Financial Intelligence (Justice Lee Adoboe) also available on wwwmyfinancialintelligence.blogspot.com