KPMG PINK SHEETS OUT

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Monday June 24, 2013

KPMG, the reputable international accounting firm, has finally completed the categorisation of the pink sheets in respect of the nature of statutory violations, irregularities and malpractices in the ongoing Presidential Election Petition.

The accounting firm has subsequently furnished all the parties with the draft report for consideration pending the completion of the counting of Justice William Atuguba’s pink sheets.

KPMG found 11,842 as per the affidavit filed but the actual count of pink sheets exhibited was 13,928 bringing a difference of 1,082.

This goes contrary to the claims by the respondents that they had less pink sheets than the petitioners claimed they had supplied to them (respondents)

The draft report issued by KPMG to all the parties was announced in court last week.

The petitioners had always insisted that the number of pink sheets involved in the exercise might have increased due to mislabelling and also said it would not affect their analysis since every polling station was counted once.

However, the respondents have accused the petitioners of deliberately ‘duplicating’ and ‘quadruplicating’ the pink sheets in order to make a case to deceive the court.

They, therefore, asked for auditing of the pink sheets filed by the petitioners and used the copies received by the presiding judge, Justice Atuguba, as control mechanism.

Atuguba Pink Sheets

The Justice Atuguba’s pink sheets, after counting so far, have turned out to be far in excess of 9,800, thus confirming the number the petitioners claimed they supplied to the court.

There were 24 categories involved in the exercise conducted by the KPMG and they were to specify in respect of each pink sheet, “polling station name and its code number and exhibit number if any,” as the court had ordered.

In tracking the pink sheets, the independent referee, in the presence of two representatives each from the parties, used the petitioners’ affidavit paragraph numbers (44 to 67) before categorising them in terms of the number of affidavits involved in each paragraph, the actual count and the difference found.

The bone of contention lies in paragraph 56 of the petitioners’ affidavit labelled as MB-P Series where the actual count exceeded the pink sheets filed as per the affidavit.

In the affidavits 6,823 pink sheets were said to have been filed while 8,905 were found in the actual count by KPMG with a difference of 2,082.

In the MB-C Series (paragraph 44), the number of affidavits were 320 and the actual count was 318 with a difference of 2, while in the MB-D series (paragraph 45) 122 were counted as per the number of affidavits and while the same 122 were recorded as the actual count.

The MB-E series (paragraph 46) recorded 374 as per the affidavit while the actual count had 371 with 3 as the difference. The MB-F series (paragraph 47) had 66 as per the affidavit and the actual count was 66.

In the MB-G series (paragraph 48) both the affidavit filed and the actual count stood at 20 and in the MB-H series (paragraph 49) the affidavits filed were 882 while the actual count was 910 with a difference of 28.

The MB-J series (paragraph 50) affidavits filed were 196 while the actual count revealed 195 with a difference of 1. In the MB-K series (paragraph 51), the affidavits filed were 71 while the actual count revealed 84 with a difference of 13.

In the MB-L series (paragraph 52), the affidavits filed were 379 and the actual count revealed 382 with a difference of 3 while in the MB-M series (paragraph 53), the affidavits filed were 1,068 while the actual count stood at 1,086 with a difference of 18.

The MB-N series (paragraph 54) had 185 affidavits filed while 181 were revealed as the actual count with a difference of 4, just as in the MB-O series (paragraph 55) both the affidavits filed and the actual count stood at 59.

In the MB-Q series (paragraph 57), the affidavits filed were 907 and the actual count revealed 874 with a difference of 33 while in the MB-S series (paragraph 58), the affidavits filed were 310 while the actual count stood at 306 with a difference of 4.

The MB-T and MB-U series (paragraphs 59 & 60), only 3 and 2 affidavits were filed respectively while the same numbers were revealed as the actual counts just as in the MB-V and MB-W series also had 12 and 4 affidavits respectively with the same number found in the respective actual counts.

Under the MB-X and MB-Z Series (paragraphs 63 & 65), there were 8 and 4 exhibits filed respectively but the respective actual counts revealed 6 and 2 bringing a shortage of 2 each while in the MB-Y, MB-AA and MB-AB Categories (paragraphs 63, 66 & 67), the exhibits filed were, 2, 2 and 23 respectively while in the respective actual counts, there were no differences recorded in each of them.

In the grand totals, the actual count stood at 13,928 while 11,842 were recorded as per the affidavits filed.

The petitioners had told the court that some of the documents were no longer relevant because they discarded them in the course of labelling.