The Botswana Football Association (BFA) Audit and Compliance Committee is said to have approved the association’s financials. The financials were presented to the committee by BFA external auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) this past Thursday.
Despite some minor qualifications and some recorded embezzlements of monies from the BFA coffers, the committee is said to have agreed with external auditors that the financials are in order.
Speaking in an interview, BFA second vice president Marshlow Motlogelwa said the audited financials are now awaiting presentation before the association’s Annual General Assembly (AGA).
“As of now, I can confirm that the audited financials have some minor qualifications. This was due to regions failing to provide some financial documents for some of the transactions they have carried out,” he explained.
Motlogelwa however said the unrecorded transactions from the regions were not massive, hence the approval of the audited report. “We also have to acknowledge that financial auditing at the region is a new thing. All along, they were not audited and now we need to workshop them on financial reporting,” he said.
Concerning the monies embezzled from the association over the duration of the past year starting in March, Motlogelwa said they have been recorded in the audited financials. “Since our financial year is from April to April, our audited financials for the past year reflect only the two fraudulent transactions carried out at the end of March. All the other fraudulent transactions will be recorded in this year’s audited financial report,” Motlogelwa explained.
He said as the fraudulent transactions were discovered just recently when last year’s report had been done, the association then alerted PWC of the development.
“Our external auditors then looked into the queried transactions and made sure that indeed the transactions were recorded in the accounts of the culprits. They also requested the police reports to verify that indeed the transactions were reported as fraudulent,” he explained.
On why the report has minor qualifications only and was not all qualified, the BFA second vice president said this was as all the transactions, both genuine and fraudulent, save for those from the regions, had been recorded.
“For a financial report to be unqualified, the auditors have to be certain transactions carried out in a financial year are fairly reflected in the audit report. This includes both the genuine and fraudulent ones. The BFA report therefore fairly reflected all the transactions carried out this past year,” he said.
Meanwhile, Motlogelwa said the association may have to reinforce its financial controls of its banking technology procedures.
While saying there was so little they could have done to avert the embezzlement of funds that hit the association, the BFA second vice president however said the association has to improve its technology controls to match the ever changing technology advancements.
“This will be something that will need the collaboration of both the BFA and its banking institutions. We will have to engage to see how in future we can validate that the account numbers match the payee’s names when we pay,” he concluded.
