KPMG Puts Total Pink Sheet Count At 13,926 …As Firm Rep Mounts Witness Box

A representative from the International Accounting and Auditing firm, KPMG, yesterday mounted the witness box and gave account on the final audit report on the pink sheet audit that the firm was commissioned to perform by the Supreme Court in the on-going election petition hearing.

Mr. Nii Amanor Dodoo, Head of Audit Practice, who went through intense cross-examination from lead counsel of the petitioners, Mr. Phillip Adisson, emphatically stated that his outfit strictly worked within tasks given them by the court and gave 13,926 pink sheets as the total exhibits in the custody of the registry of the court.

According to him, even though his firm received the petitioners comments made on the draft report of the audit, KPMG only worked on issued that were pertinent to the tasks given the auditing firm.

Mr. Amanor Dodoo, who is a court witness, vehemently denied petitioners' assertions that there were 171 errors in the entries made by KPMG, as he confirmed that entries made by his firm on the pink sheet audit, were the exact reflection of the real situation.

Witness told the court, presided over by Justice William Atuguba that 34 pink sheets out of the 171 pink sheets indicated by the petitioners were errors made by the petitioners, noting 'there were no errors on our part'.

Other panel members include Justices Julius Ansah, Sophia Adinyira, Rose Owusu, Jones Dotse, Anin-Yeboah, Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, Sule Gbadegbe and Vida Akoto-Bamfo.

On remarks passed on the pink sheets audit, the representative of KPMG noted there were instances of illegible polling station codes and polling station names, repeated exhibits and repeated polling station codes among others.

Further analyzing the report, witness pointed out that 655 polling stations out of the total exhibit counted could not be identified, with 9,504 exhibit numbers appearing once as well as 5,470 polling station codes appearing once.

Additionally, Mr. Amanor Dodoo noted that there were 2,877 repeated exhibits and 6,911 repeated [polling station codes, stressing that a count of the presiding judges set of pink sheets amounted to 9,860 pink sheets.

He also indicated that 6,629 pink sheets exhibits in the custody of the court Registrar are not in the presiding judge's set, while 2,876 pink sheets exhibits in the presiding judge's set are not in the Court Registrar's set.

The audit of the pink sheet exhibits by KPMG was necessitated when the total number of exhibits filed by the petitioners erupted into controversy. The audit of the exhibits filed at the court Registry was later extended to a count of exhibits with the presiding judge as a control measure in determining the actual exhibits filed before the court.

The 2012 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, his running mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and Party National Chairman, Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey are in court challenging the declaration of John Mahama as winner in the 2012 Presidential election by the Electoral Commission (EC).

Petitioners have sued John Mahama and the EC, but the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was later made a party to the case after the court accepted their request to join the issue before the court.

Petitioners were asking the court to annul 4, 670,504 votes, representing votes cast in 11,916 polling stations across the country for what they termed' gross and widespread irregularities' recorded during the December 2012 Polls. Meanwhile, petitioners have currently reduced the number of polling stations they are challenging to 11,138.

However, the respondents have denied the assertions of the petitioners, noting that the results of the election as declared were credible.