The new audit report presented by the internal audit office of the CSS to the public prosecutor’s office has been fiddled with, according to both Mr. Guillermo Sáez Llorens, former CSS director, and Mr. Marlon de Souza, his deputy. Mr. Sáez Llorens is being investigated, along with other 10 people, by the public prosecutor’s office because of claims that the SAP system is inoperative.
“To state that the SAP system is inoperative only goes to demonstrate the lack of operational expertise on the part of the current administration”, Mr. Sáez Llorens argued. SAP is a product that has been in use in Panama for 43 years and has over 300 clients nationally.
According to the former CSS Director, it is in fact the authors of the audit report who are inoperative; he claims that the SAP system was successfully implemented in June 2012. “It was in working order when we left the administration, it is currently working and it is in fact thanks to it that the CSS procurement system function, for instance”. Mr. Sáez Llorens added that, prior to the implementation of the SAP system, CSS internal proceedings were mostly manual in nature: and that the benefits of the system have extended to the financial, administrative and HR areas of the CSS.
In the audit report, he added, it is plain to see how the very auditors are not qualified to carry out the analysis required, and how they resorted to the help of the Technological University of Panama to carry out their basic duties. Others also claim that the system is actually working.
Mr Sáez Llorens also highlighted how the current investigation is in reality based on claims that the SAP is not operative, and it has nothing to do with supposed kickbacks, as a local newspaper has been reporting. He believes that the real motives behind this latest reports are others: namely the desire of the CSS current director and executives to obfuscate their ineptitude and all the problems that has brought about. “Instead of publishing fiddled and misleading reports to try and tarnish our reputation, they should focus on the needs of the CSS and its development”, he added.
Licenses
According to Marlon de Souza, former deputy director of the CSS, if the SAP system were actually inoperative, then the payment of $1m made by the CSS in September 2015 for the purchase of more licenses required to operate the system, makes no sense.
He went on to say that the public prosecutor’s office, instead of actually verifying the claim of inoperativeness, “jumped the gun and called the former executives of the CSS to testify for a allegedly causing a $14.5m damage to the Panamanian State coffers, on the basis that they purchased an inoperative IT system that is, nevertheless, currently in use!”.
“Two former state administrators have been denied a formal defense: their human rights have been violated. The public prosecutor’s office interpretation of events is completely mistaken”, he added.
Mr. de Souza went on to claim that there currently is a long list of complaints that have been lodged against the current audit office director of the CSS, Francisco Batista, for allegedly fiddling with reports as well as for manipulating financial data, such as the debt owed by Petaquilla Gold, where he was previously in-house controller.
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