Auditors have uncovered spending irregularities by the Embassy of Canada to Senegal, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. “There is room for improvement,” said auditors in an audit. The audit period coincided with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Senegalese tour in a failed bid to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Auditors cited a lack of controls on contracting. They examined spending from 2019 to 2022 at the Embassy of Canada to Senegal, which was the second largest Canadian mission in Africa with a $9.4 million annual budget. Of the 41 contract inspections at random, they found 10 had irregularities, including invoice padding “where an amendment was made to pay for an item that was already planned for in the contract.” They uncovered cases of contract splitting — a breach of Treasury Board of Canada rules where managers split a large expense into incremental payments to avoid scrutiny. “There was one transaction where the supplier’s name in the financial and administrative system did not match the supplier’s name on the invoice,” said auditors. “A number of purchases made using the petty cash accounts were not supported by invoices from the supplier.” The audit period coincided with Trudeau’s 2020 campaign to win a seat on the UN Security Council at an $8.9 million cost. Canada finished third in balloting that year behind Norway and Ireland. Auditors have conducted ongoing checks at foreign missions worldwide since Global Affairs Canada discovered in 2016 employees ran a $1.7 million fraud ring at the Embassy of Canada to Haiti. Thirteen employees were fired. Auditors identified improper contracting at Canadian embassies and consulates in Central and South America in 2022. READ MORE: Audit finds trouble at Canadian embassies in Latin America“The audit team noted a contract valued at $500 million, which is unusual since no mission has a budget of that magnitude,” said the auditors. “This was confirmed to be an error.”
