Treasury: public accountants are no more willing to be made scapegoats

The more than one year long crisis has a lot to do with the noticed public treasury linked embezzlements. The warning strike led by the Central Treasury’s staff made of agents and public accountants would have no political ground. Plaintiffs are protesting against their potential indictment for complicity with state finances related fraudulent acts. « Fund  management involves various actors with respectively defined prerogatives, but public accountants’ responsibility is being systematically engaged in fraud cases even if those prerogatives are clearly separated », read their complain in a communiqué.  

So was the Mahajanga city’s public treasury agent’s case: he release money based on forged documents. The Boeny capital city’s regional department put its foot in it. Due to a fake payment slip, a amount of money appearing to be significant enough for deserving more caution, withered. Signature forgery was spotted when the slip reached Antananarivo’s mothership. The post operation control  failed to prevent the crime. The  case is being assessed by Mahajanga city’s first instance court, a verdict will be pronounced on May 29th, 2010.  

The concerned public accountant is necessarily responsible and potentially guilty. In face of the pending threat, the public treasury’s agents and public accountants are claiming the reassessment of the regulation. They put up the impossibility to check the expense’s legality, for being only restricted on working with presented documents. Law as well as these public money linked civil servants’ statute are asked to be enhanced anew. The public treasury’s staff is longing for the setting up of a Financial Disciplinary Council meant to attest documents’ legality at any lavel  

The public accountant’s responsibility has so far been systematic in fraud related cases. Penal sanctions would have led several dozens of them behind bars for a long long time on financial fraud indictments. The public accountant is definitely playing with his destiny in case of illegal fund release. Being in charge of such funds without being given any real power makes the public accountant’s profession a high risk job. Public accountants are actually supposed to be able to keep in control of cash flows by the law. 

In the end, the public accountant’s everyday lifetime danger is no more the temptation to draw some leaflets from the cash register. It would immediately be spotted by the legion of control devices empowered by the hierarchy. The danger comes from frauds perpetrated by contractors dealing with the government. The control process is actually failing from having a critical say at whatever bill attesting any completed service and its amount.  

The public treasury’s staff is alarming the state officials, in this case the HAT, about the skyrocketing rate of embezzlements which undermine public finances. Forgery of invoices, various documents and signatures are technically legal forms of tricks to plunder state owned funds. Everything was closed on May 12th, 2010, in the capital city as well as throughout the regions.