The Forensic Audit Iceberg: We Are Seeing Only One-Fifth of the Problem

The forensic audit report should be read like an iceberg. What the public can see above the waterline is already alarming: 814 findings, 585 of them rated Very High or High severity, 80 special investigation referrals, contracts and payments with a combined gross value of about P160 billion, and a conservative preliminary estimate of P33 billion in potential loss or damage. This report is not the whole iceberg.

It is the visible tip.The forensic audit programme covered 30 selected audits, drawn from a Phase 1 risk assessment of 92 public sector entities. It focused mainly on the period from April 2014 to March 2024, and it was explicitly described as targeted and risk-based, not a statutory audit or whole-of-government review of every public body, project, contract, transaction or allegation. The report itself warns that the absence of a matter from the summary should not be read as meaning no issue exists.

The report gives us enough to understand the scale, but not enough to claim the full picture. And what we can see is grave. Procurement and governance account for the largest share of findings.

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Procurement alone produced 238 findings, while governance produced 215. Together they account for about 56% of all findings. These are not side issues.

Procurement is where the state decides what to buy, who to buy from, how much to pay, whether competition is genuine, whether delivery is verified, and whether public money becomes public value. Governance is where those decisions should be supervised, challenged and corrected. When procurement and governance fail together, the state loses its immune system.

The audit found repeated use of non-competitive procurement, weakly justified direct awards, emergency procurement, tender manipulation, unsupported payments, weak contract management, compromised oversight, poor records, weak financial discipline and indicators of fraud, corruption, collusion, conflicts of interest and abuse of office. It also found stalled or incomplete projects, assets acquired but not used, services contracted but not delivered or utilised, and weaknesses in the allocation of high-value public resources. A country can survive individual cases of fraud. It cannot easily survive a system in which controls are ignored, procurement is manipulated, records disappear, oversight is weak, boards do not function, whistleblowers feel unsafe, and consequences are delayed or absent.

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