Former Auditor-General Daniel Yao Domelevo has advised President Akufo-Addo to utilise existing state institutions to audit the contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML).

He believes this will save the public purse rather than delegating the task to another institution to undertake such an important audit.

According to him, the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) was established solely to investigate such matters; therefore, they should be allowed to function without any interference.

"If the President is interested in an audit to be done, Article 187(8) mandates the President on advice from the Council of State to request the auditor general to do such an audit.

"Again the issue has been reported already to the OSP, so he sits with the case. I don’t know why we will not allow the OSP to do the audit instead of engaging KPMG to do what state institutions are mandated to do.

“I have also heard that parliament has requested or authorised the finance committee to do this audit. Let me say that, I think that as much as we are worried about corruption.

"We must also be worried about the waste of public resources. these are all waste of public resources.

"We have institutions given this mandate to protect the public purse. We should use them instead of instead of engaging KPMG,” he said on Joy FM's Midday News.

He was reacting to a January 2, release in which the President asked  KPMG to conduct a two-week audit of the contract.

• Read also: Akufo-Addo orders audit into GRA/SML contract

Mr Domelevo explained that the decision to delegate the investigation to KPMG creates  the impression that the private audit firms are considered as “superhuman beings.”

On the back of this, he stressed that "Parliament and the office of the President should back off and allow the Office of the Special Prosecutor to do its work. “ 

“Most of the issues have already been reported by Manasseh and the team, they just have to verify it and if confirmed then they take the necessary action and save us the additional use of public funds in a way that adds no value,” he added.