The National Assembly’s Special Select Committee, which is looking into the sale and disposal of former President Yahya Jammeh’s assets, heard testimony from Accountant General Agnes Macauley on Wednesday. She testified in-depth about the management and deposit of the proceeds from the asset sales.
Macauley told the committee that the D28,750 opening balance in the Janjanbureh Sub-Treasury Account was not included in the profits from the sale of the Jammeh assets. The entire amount of deposits associated with the sales, according to her, was D5,819,000, of which D5,818,000 was transferred.
She clarified that not all entries were related to the Jammeh assets because the account in question also handled other sub-treasury transactions.
“Visibly, by looking at the descriptions on the document, I can only take
those that are captured here explicitly and are relating to, or make mention of, the Jammeh asset sale,” she explained.
Counsel Aji Sainey Kah provided a reconciliation sheet that revealed a D1,000 deficiency after the D5,818,000 transfer. Macauley ascribed this residual amount to banking rules that forbid depleting an account to zero prior to the end of the year.
“According to the MOU we have with the banks, there should be a balance in the accounts, so in transferring, you do not bring the account to zero unless and until it’s 31st December,” she said.
She went on to say that sub-treasury account balancing is overseen by a specialized reconciliation staff, especially for transactions involving the transfer of funds into the Janneh Commission recovery account.
“We have a reconciliation team that handles some of the subtreasury bank accounts reconciliation, especially for this activity to support the movement of funds from the bank account to that of the Janneh recovery account,” she said.
Minor discrepancies between the bank statements and the reconciliation sheet, such as two entries dated October 10, 2018, were also noted by committee members. Macauley concurred that in order to distinguish the earnings from the sale of Jammeh assets from those from other sub-treasury operations, a comprehensive reconciliation is necessary.
