APIPA conference focuses on procurement fraud

Pacific auditors meeting to target key procurement problems

The annual conference of auditors and government accountants from United States-affiliated islands will tackle procurement fraud prevention as one of a number of key financial management courses to be held in Majuro early next month.

The Association of Pacific Island Public Auditors annual conference is the largest gathering of auditors and government finance managers in the United States-affiliated Pacific area. The main goal of APIPA is to provide a single forum to promote efficiency and accountability in member islands.

“It’s a big group,” Marshall Islands Auditor General Junior Patrick, whose office is hosting the July 4-8 event, said earlier this week. “Over 300 people have already registered to participate.”

The annual conference has continued to grow in recent years because the event that in the 1990s involved only auditors now includes financial managers from many government departments in each U.S.-affiliated island group. Auditors and finance managers are expected to attend from Palau, Guam, the Northern Marianas, the four islands in the Federated States of Micronesia and American Samoa.

“The conference was established mainly for auditors in 1988,” Patrick said. “But later, auditors recognized that audit work depends entirely on the accounting function. Over the past 10 years, they’ve expanded training courses for accountants and financial managers.”

The five-day conference features a variety of courses that auditors and government accounting staff take to update their skills. One of the key conference training sessions is on identifying and preventing procurement fraud, which is highly relevant to all islands in the region, Patrick said. “Procurement is the heart of everything (in government financial management),” he said. “It’s the biggest (problem area) everywhere.”

The Marshall Islands Attorney General’s Office is in the midst of prosecuting 12 people for alleged theft of more than $500,000 in U.S. funding, all of which revolves around fraudulent procurement activity.

“The procurement fraud session will help everyone to improve,” he said, adding that all recent audits for the Marshall Islands government have pointed out procurement problems.