Two members of the Public Account and Audit Committees of both Houses of the National Legislature have condemned the manner Solicitor-General designate of Liberia, Cyrenius Cephas is proceeding with the indictment of past and current public officials.
Senator Dallas Gueh and Representative Richard Koon said Counselor Cephas was proceeding wrongly without the validation of the culpability of the charges by the Houses’ committee responsible for providing oversight into such endeavor.
Representative Koon and Senator Gueh appearing on the OK Morning Rush during the weekend said, the action of the Executive Branch through the Solicitor General designate to implement Audit Reports of the GAC without the inputs of the Legislature undermines the coordination of the three branches of government in the spirit of check and balance.
According to Representative Koon who is member of the Public Accounts Committee said, the only audit reports of the GAC capable of indicting alleged corrupt officials is the audit done at the Central Bank.
Richard Koon:
First and foremost, the GAC is not accountable to the Executive; by law, they should report to the national legislature. The legislature in return sends the audit report to the public account and audit committees that validates; we call in those witnesses indicted in that audit report for questioning.
We validate and see whether the government has a case, and finally endorse the report by plenary of both houses.
We than send the endorse audit report to the president of the republic. It is from the office of the president it now travels to the Ministry of Justice for Prosecution.
Dallas Gueh:
For his part, Senator Gueh revealed that the Public Account Committee has validated series of audit reports from the GAC which are expected to be implemented by the Ministry of Justice, but said the current ongoing indictments of alleged Corrupt Government officials by the Ministry of Justice falls short of the audit reports scrutinized and validated.
That Audit report from central Bank, we invited GAC, the Ministry of Justice, including some stakeholders and the report showed frauds and we released our findings to plenary of recent.
