The 52nd Asian Development Bank Annual Meeting, held in Nadi in 2019, is the subject of an alleged fraud investigation that the Ministry of Civil Service is contemplating taking before the Fiji Independent Commission against Corruption.

The Ministry of Civil Service was given the responsibility to plan the international event, which attracted over 3000 attendees from 76 countries.

As the host country, the former government allocated $10 million to meet the costs of the event, and upon completion of the meeting, the actual cost incurred was $10.9 million.

According to the special report, the additional $0.9 million was sourced from the government’s Head 50 Budget.

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts yesterday received a joint submission from the Ministry of Civil Service and Finance Ministry on the ADB 52nd Meeting Special Investigation Report.

Permanent Secretary Parmesh Chand says the Ministry is committed to addressing any potential financial misconduct and maintaining the integrity of public funds.

“When I was getting my team to compile the answers to the reports, I did inquire as to what actions have been taken so far. The responses were rather vague, and everybody was looking at each other without any decisive responses. So we have intentions to refer this matter given there have been no forthcoming responses to the appropriate authority, and in this case, possibly FICAC, to do further interrogation in these regards.”

Chand has provided a firm assurance to the committee that the matter at hand will be thoroughly pursued.

“We have answered as far as administrative issues are concerned, but it is beyond us at the moment to be able to exactly pinpoint given the manner in which the whole thing got blurry due to the fact that somebody ended up going into the system and deleting the bulk of the records. So that in itself raises huge alarm bells for us. And as head of the ministry currently, I do intend to take this matter further.”

According to the special investigation report, there was sufficient audit evidence to determine the existence of alleged fraud around the processing of meal claims, reimbursement of petty cash, processing of volunteer meal allowances, and processing of cash cheques without supporting documents.

It says instances were noted where payments were allegedly made on inflated invoice amounts, and invoices were allegedly used as quotations to support payments made.

The report also states that the existence of alleged fraud is further supported by the fact that unauthorized modification of system data took place, resulting in the mass voiding of payments and the deliberate deleting of system-generated reports.

The report also alleges that segregation of duties was not maintained during the payment process, and there was a lack of supervision during the payment process for goods and services.