Bond Scandal: Miscalculations of Auditor General revealed when cross examined

By Shehan Chamika Silva

The document prepared by the Auditor General in selecting which  samples of 'Treasury Bond Auctions' he would apply to conduct the audit on bond issuances of CBSL, contained miscalculations, it was revealed during cross examination today.

Initially, Auditor General, Gamini Wijesinghe was required to conduct a special audit on Bond auctions held during February 27, 2015 to May, 2016.

After examining the data of the all auctions, he had chosen two Treasury Bond Auctions (held on February 27, 2015 and March 29, 2016), which depicted strange issues.

He had decided to conduct the audit on the two particular auctions based on a document prepared by him using data of the CBSL bond issuance during the given time.

At the cross examination led by Senior Counsel Shanaka de Silva, who appeared for former Governor on the T-bond auction held on March 29, 2016, it was said that the Auditor General had selected sample auctions unfairly because he had only decided to conduct audit on February 27th, 2015 and March 29th, 2016 auctions, and that the decision was taken based on inaccurately prepared documents.

It was revealed that the Auditor General had computed wrongly in the document when deciding percentage of excess amount of bids accepted on March 29, 2016 comparing to the offered amount of the bids.

The value of the bids offered by the CBSL initially at the auction (March 29, 2016) was Rs. 40 billion but had unusually accepted Rs. 77.732 billion bids exceeding Rs.37.732 billion by the CBSL.

The miscalculated percentage of excess amount of bids accepted depicted in the Auditor General’s document as 326%, where it should be 190% comparing to the offered amount of bids at the particular auction, explained Mr. de Silva.

Mr. de Silva was of the view that the Auditor General was bias when selecting sample auctions to his audit.

In reply, the Auditor General said that the miscalculations had not affected to his final recommendations of the audit report sent to the COPE, therefore they were not that serious.

Consequently, the Commission said the matter brought into light by the counsel representing former governor was a serious one since the commission would rely on the data represented by the Auditor General; therefore correction is required at this time if there were miscalculations.