Auditors failing to access information on what happened to 'missing' USD15 billion diamond money : Minister

Minister of mines and mining development, Walter Chidhakwa has said that so far auditors have no idea what happened to the government’s missing $15 billion diamond revenues. This is due to the fact that the auditors are finding it difficult to access the relevant information what will allow them to trace the funds. Chidhakwa said this when he was responding to a question from Midlands Senator Lillian Timveous, who wanted to know the progress made by the government in tracing the missing funds. Chidhakwa said:

There have been three teams (of auditors) from three companies that we appointed and, as a result, they have been working and the last report that we got was that they were having difficulties with accessing information.

The contracted companies would not have unfettered access to information that was required because the companies, which they wanted to do forensic audits on were in fact before the courts.

We restarted the activity for some of the companies once the court cases had been decided upon and we realised that issues of information still remained a problem. We have now opted for the use of technology to access information and be able to establish exactly how much was moved from the ground, and from there we will work out how many diamonds were lost in the process.

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