A partner at international accounting and auditing firm, KPMG, Mr. Nii Amanor Dodoo, has stated while appearing as a witness to defend the work of KPMG in its audit of the pink sheets filed by the petitioners in the presidential election petition, that the firm took no inventory of the pink sheets in the custody of the registry before commencing its work.
Mr. Amanoo Dodoo stated this on Thursday while being cross-examined by lead Counsel for the petitioners, Philip Addison, on the final report on the count of pink sheets it undertook.
Earlier, Counsel Addison asked the KPMG representative if it took an inventory of the pink sheets in the custody of the registry. Mr. Amanoo Dodoo in responding stated that the firm did not take an inventory of the pink sheets.
The clarification provided by the KPMG partner rubbishes various statements made by counsels for the NDC and John Mahama, Tsatsu Tsikata and Tony Lithur in open court, as well as various statements made by particularly NDC communicators that, KPMG, before the start of the count, took an inventory of the boxes and that the boxes in the custody of the registry had without explanation increased from the number on the inventory of KPMG to a new figure.
It would be recalled that a day after commencing its work, the respondents (John Mahama, the NDC and the Electoral Commission) raised various issues and threw out several allegations in open court, including allegations of criminality against the registry of the court among others, claiming severally that the boxes in the custody of the registry had been inflated and that an inventory taken by KPMG together with the other representatives of the parties proved their case.
Though the petitioners disputed their claim and put on record that they were not aware of any inventory, the respondents stuck to their allegations and indeed repeated such allegations severally in the course of the case.
The representative of KPMG also confirmed in his evidence that as many as 2,876 exhibits were found in the president of the panel’s set, which was not found in the registrar’s set and that a further 6,629 exhibits were also found in the registrar’s set which were not in the president’s set.
This supports the case of the petitioners who attribute the issues on the number of unique pink sheets submitted to mix-ups in the registry’s service of the exhibits to the various parties as it is clear that there are pink sheets in the custody of the president of the panel, not in the registry’s own set and vice-versa