ISLAMABAD: The sensitive task of auditing the billions of rupees disbursed to Pakistan’s 124 foreign missions has become more of a junket than a professional posting, with officials from other services lobbying for and receiving the lucrative foreign assignment.

According to audit papers seen by Dawn, the office of the auditor general of Pakistan (AGP) allegedly sent ‘irrelevant’ officers to examine the accounts of embassies for FY2013-14, which is said to have compromised the quality of the audit.

Any officer appointed for a foreign audit is paid an honorarium of Rs800,000 per visit, while their boarding and lodging expenses are usually borne by the host mission.

According to a letter, dated Oct 22 2015, the AGP’s office sent officials who had never dealt an audit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or foreign embassies on these assignments. These officers were assigned to Pakistani embassies in New York, Washington, Chicago, Vienna, The Hague, Rome, Brussels, Toronto, Ottawa, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Copenhagen, Oslo, Frankfurt, Ankara, Istanbul, Cairo and other foreign missions to audit their accounts.

According to the documents seen by Dawn, only one audit officer out of 26 belonged to the Directorate General of Foreign and International Audit, while the rest came from areas such as the Works directorate, Wapda and field offices in KP, Punjab, Sindh and Islamabad.

PAC surprised by decades-old unsettled audit paras

In a letter to the deputy auditor general on July 7, 2012, the director general of audit had observed that officers other than those from the Foreign and International Audit directorate “are not [very] familiar with the audit of foreign missions, hence are not able to produce [an] effective audit”.

The DG suggested that at least half the auditors assigned to examine the books of embassies abroad come from the Foreign and International Audit directorate. The letter also suggested that the “AGP’s office may kindly convey permission to amend the policy on foreign audit assignment to [the] stated effect”.

PAC discrepancies

In recent meetings, members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) were surprised to note that audit paras over a decade old were still far from being settled.

In a briefing to the PAC, the foreign secretary claimed that most of the audit paras related to the sale of properties in Tokyo were irrelevant. He claimed that not only were the discrepancies bringing bad name to the ambassador who served in Japan at the time, but were also affecting relations with the Japanese government.

In a subsequent PAC meeting, the NAB DG Zahir Shah said he had written to the Japanese and Indonesian governments to ask for records of the properties that Pakistani heads of missions had sold over a decade ago.

An audit official told Dawn that these para were still unsettled because the reports were not prepared by officials well-versed with foreign audits. Since auditing foreign missions is considered a luxury trip and the auditor receives at least Rs0.8 million per trip, in addition to their monthly salary, everyone wants to go abroad. “However, only those in the good books of the AGP could manage such assignments,” he added.

Against court orders?

In 2013, at least 18 senior auditors from the Directorate General of Foreign and International Audit had also filed a petition before the Islamabad High Court, pointing out that in FY2011-12, Rs9.43 billion was allocated to 124 foreign missions and the AGP’s office sent officers of his liking to audit that amount.

On May 7 2013, IHC Justice Noorul Haq N. Qureshi disposing of the petition directed the auditor general to “formulate the policy strictly in accordance with law”.

In response to the IHC directive, the AGP’s office formulated a policy that explained that any officer of Pakistan Audit and Accounts Service, audit officers from the Foreign and International Audit directorate, as well as “other formations”, could be selected for foreign assignments.

An overview of recent foreign postings reveals that an overwhelming majority of audit officials posted to foreign missions belong to departments other than the relevant directorate.

However, Jamal Abdul Nasir Usmani, the AGP’s spokesperson, told Dawn that auditors from the Foreign and International Audit directorate were also required in the country and that all of them could not be sent abroad. He said that the AGP’s office sent officials on foreign assignments in view of their expertise in the relevant field.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2016