XYZ News can confirm that international accounting and auditing firm, KPMG, did not take an initial inventory of the number of boxes containing pink sheets (primary electoral records) in the custody of the Supreme Court’s Registry before it started auditing the sheets.

A Senior Partner with KPMG, Joseph Winful, told XYZ News in an interview on Wednesday May 22, 2013 that it was not part of their mandate to take an inventory of the boxes of pink sheets.

Mr. Winful said: “No we didn’t, it was for the simple reason that whatever we do must be stated in the scope of work we are supposed to do”.

H explained: “If you look at our scope of work, we were not directed to count the boxes or sheets before commencement of the job; I understand the Judge again said there must be control mechanisms and so on, but we did not count”.

Mr. Winful noted: “We all went into the room on Thursday, initially to take a look at how the storage was like”.

“All these boxes are in the custody of the registrar so I’m sure that someone must have looked round and counted [but] I personally did not even pay attention to the number of boxes in the room…I just saw how they were packed and said ok, it was a bit confined; I mean that was all that I saw; a typical storage room, so if somebody took a cursory glance and counted, [then] that’s fine; they might have done that but I’m not privy to the number of boxes per se because we have a clear statement of work; the directive from the Judge is very clear, going item by item so if he says exhibit so so and section so so and so, we are going to go by it step-by-step”, Mr. Winful clarified.

The audit was ordered by the court at the instance of Mr. Tsikata who had, during his cross-examination of key witness Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, averred that the number of pink sheets tendered in evidence by the petitioners fell far short of the 11, 842 constantly touted by the same petitioners.

However, no sooner had the auditing began than the legal teams of the three respondents expressed suspicions and reservations that seven alien boxes stuffed with pink sheets had been allegedly smuggled into the Court’s Registry to shore up the original number of 24 boxes.

They suspect the seven additional boxes were meant to bloat the number of pink sheets.

The respondents have resolved to formally write to KPMG to investigate what they have described as the strange appearance of the additional boxes of pink sheets.