‘Some Pink Sheets Not Counted’ - KPMG Inventory

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Parent Category: Justice & Security

Category: Law Reports

Created on Friday, 28 June 2013 00:00

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Inventory

Mr Dodoo told the court that, KPMG, as a referee did not take any inventory of the pink sheets in the custody of the Registry before commencing its work.

Addison: Did you take inventory of all the pink sheets in the custody of the Registry prior to the counting.

Dodoo: No we did not.

This is contrary to claims by counsel for President Mahama and the NDC in open court 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.

Addison: Were you informed as to who filed the pink sheets.

Dodoo: Yes we were told the Petitioners filed.

Addison: Did it come to your attention that the Respondents had filed any pink sheet?

Dodoo: Not that I recall.

Addison: You were asked to do a faithful count of the pinks right.

Dodoo: Yes

Addison: How many were the pink sheets in the custody of the Registry.

Dodoo: 13,926

Addison: There were a number of pink sheets with respect to the Registry there were remarks you made. What were those remarks.

Mr Dodoo explained that information on those pink sheets was not legible.

Addison: Are you aware that a polling station can be uniquely identified by a polling station code.

Dodoo: I guess so. It was not the mandate of the KPMG to identify the polling station by its code.

Addison: The total number of pink sheets with these remarks were 1045 is that right?

Dodoo: Yes, that is right.

The Remarks

Mr Dodoo explained to the court that the reason why KPMG did not incorporate the remarks made by the petitioners in the final report was because they did not have the order given by the court.

Mr Addison then said the petitioners were not impressed with the explanation and said if KPMG knew they did not need the comments from the parties they ought not to have asked for them in the first place.

Addison: Mr Amanor –Dodoo did you receive the petitioners’ comment on your draft report?

Dodoo: Yes we did.

Addison: I believe it came to you in the form of a letter and annexes?

Dodoo: That’s the case, my lords.

Addison: Did you do anything with these comments?

Dodoo: My lords, to the extent that they were pertinent to the task we were requested to carry out.

Addison: In the petitioners’ comment, your attention was drawn to 171 errors that were inadvertently made by you in your report.

Dodoo: Yes, that is what your comment that you issued indicated.

Addison: Did you verify the accuracy of that statement?

Dodoo: Yes we did my lords.

Addison: And what were the results?

Dodoo: The results were that the information that we had captured reflected what was extracted from the pink sheets that we examined.

Addison: Those were entry errors; 171 were entry errors by your staff in entering the polling station codes and so it was for you to verify, did you verify?

Dodoo: I just said that we did check to the details that were extracted and we did indeed confirm that what has been extracted was a true reflection of data that had been captured…

The Confusion

Justice Sule Gbadegbe interrupted apparently because the explanation was not exactly clear).

Justice Gbadegbe…Even me, I cannot understand what you actually wanted to say. Did your verification, according to your question, confirm their query or it went otherwise?

Dodoo: My lords, we went through a process, what that process entails is that extracts that were made at the end of each day were confirmed to be a true and accurate reflection of the details that reflected each of the pink sheets, now, copies of those things were actually circulated to them to each of the parties and neither at any point did any of them come back with any corrections that needed to be made. The 171 items that he mentioned here; in cross-checking, 34 of those items were found indeed to be errors on their part….so for the reason the 34 could not even have been said to be error. Now, the rest, what was done was to confirm that to be data that was extracted which had been confirmed and there was no error that were highlighted.

Addison: Mr Dodoo, I must confess; I don’t understand your answer. Were you able to cross-check against the pink sheets which you have wrongly entered their polling station codes, were you able to do this?

Dodoo: If the extract from the pink sheet that was made was correct on the document which we checked to, then the end result will be that what we crosschecked against would be the correct number.

Addison: My question is that you have given a draft report, we have pointed out certain errors, where do you crosscheck these errors from; the same draft report? (Justice Dotse interrupts)

Justice Dotse: Mr. Amanor-Dodoo, do I understand you to say that 34 out of the 171 were found out by you to be errors on the part of the petitioners?

Dodoo: That is so, my lord.

Justice Dotse: Then the rest were confirmed to be correct according to your report?

Referee: That is so my lord….

Addison: The Petitioners gave a list of 850 pink sheets from the 1045 pink sheets on which those remarks were made and explained that those pink sheets could be identified by the polling station code is that right.

Dodoo: Yes but our mandate was not to identify those pink sheets by the code. We were asked to make a faithful count. We could not have done anything other than that. Another court order can be given and those concerns could be addressed.

Addison suggested to Mr Dodoo that out of the 1045 remarked by KPMG, the petitioners found 1,086 with unique polling stations but Mr Dodoo said he had no answer to that question before the court intervened to ask Mr Addison to restrict his questions to the level of knowledge of the witness on the matter.

Addison: How many unique pink sheets were counted in the Registrar’s set?

Mr Dodoo said a straight answer could not be given because the count was based on three issues; exhibit numbers, polling station codes and polling station names.

He said each situation generated different numbers because some of the exhibit numbers were repeated.

Addison: Were you given the list of the 26,000 polling stations in your counting.

Dodoo: No

Addison: What is the total number of pink sheets counted from the President’s set?

Dodoo: 9,856, but four instances where the exhibit numbers were on another sheet so the total was 9860.

Addison: The 9,860 does not include a set of series which was not counted.

Dodoo: Yes

Addison: So the figure given is an incomplete figure.

Dodoo: That is so and we have stated it in the report.

Addison: Can you tell the court the total unique pink sheets from the President’s custody.

Dodoo: We were limited to checking the President’s set in comparison to that of the Registrar’s. So I cannot tell the total unique pink sheets.

Addison: There were 2,876 pink sheets in the President’s set but not in the Registrar’s set is that correct?

Dodoo: Yes that is correct.

Addison: Did you identify any pink sheet in the Registrar’s set that were not part of the President’s set?

Dodoo: Yes, and the number is 6,629.

Addison: Are you aware that pink sheets were also served on all the respondents.

Dodoo: I presume so.

Soft Copy Reloaded

After the tendering of the comments had been dismissed, Mr Addison turned his attention to the soft copy issue by finding out from the witness if he recalled telling the court that the KPMG as a risk management policy did not give out soft copies to their clients.

Mr Dodoo said they did not “ordinarily” give out the soft copies and when Mr Addison probed further to find out under what circumstance were soft copies given out the KPMG representative read the company’s manual to explain his point.

Mr Addison, however, suggested to the witness that KPMG had no such policy with regard to the clients and that there were KPMG copies on the internet and said what the witness read was in respect of third parties.

Justice Atuguba came in to find out the relevance of the question and said the issue about soft copy was raised and ruled upon.

Justice Baffoe-Bonnie also intervened and said the request for the soft copy was to facilitate the perusal of the report but that was over. Mr Addison, however, told the court that they went through great pains in arriving at their conclusions.

Another judge intervened. He said he understood the petitioners’ request for soft copy was to facilitate their perusal of the final report of the KPMG but even without the soft copy they have done a good work in perusing the report and have come out with valid comments. He wondered why the petitioners would now go back to the issue of soft copies.

On Tuesday July 2, 2013, when the court resumes sitting, counsel for the respondents are expected also to cross-examine the PKGM representative.

Mr Lithur was due to start yesterday but had to cut everything short due to time constraints.

By William Yaw Owusu & Raphael Ofori-Adeniran Source: Daily Guide/Ghana