I didn’t appoint PwC for NNPC audit
The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, on Thursday said she never appointed
PriceWaterHouseCoopers to carry out the forensic audit of the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation.
The minister, who stated this in a
statement issued by her Special Adviser on Communications, Mr. Paul
Nwabuikwu, was reacting to what she described as a frivolous law suit
instituted against her by a group of three accounting firms, SIAO
Partners.
The firm, according to the statement, had
filed a suit against the minister before a Lagos High Court, alleging
that she appointed the global audit firm, PWC, to conduct the recently
concluded forensic audit of the NNPC in violation of the provisions of
the Local Content Act.
ADVERTISEMENT
The
statement read, “It has come to the attention of the Coordinating
Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, that SIAO Partners, a group of three accounting firms,
has filed a suit against her before a Lagos High Court.
“The minister is yet to be formally
notified of the suit but from information gleaned from media reports,
the group is alleging that she appointed the global audit firm,
PriceWaterHouseCoopers to conduct the recently concluded forensic audit
of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation against the provisions of
the Local Content Act.
“The CME is astonished by the news of the
said court action, which is spurious in the extreme. It is shocking
that professionals of the calibre of the SIAO Partners can embark on
this kind of legal action without taking the trouble to do the minimum
amount of homework to confirm basic facts.
“Dr. Okonjo-Iweala did not appoint the
PWC to carry out the audit. The SIAO Partners should immediately drop
this totally baseless suit or she will see them in court.”
PwC was last year hired the Federal
Government to carry out the audit of the NNPC following an allegation by
the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, that
$49bn was not remitted to the Federation Account by the corporation.
No comments:
Post a Comment