Federal auditors have uncovered suspected fuel theft, contract splitting and improper spending at Canada’s Embassy in Nairobi, the latest foreign mission to face scrutiny over weak financial controls.The Audit Of Management Practices At Missions: Nairobi identified numerous irregularities at the embassy, which operates on a $12.5 million annual budget. The report did not specify how much taxpayers may have lost through misconduct.“The audit identified inconsistent application of established processes across programs which weakens overall control effectiveness and oversight reliability,” auditors wrote.Blacklock's Reporter said the audit acknowledged operating conditions in Kenya presented additional risks for Canadian officials.“The procurement and vendor landscape remains challenging with risks linked to corruption, inconsistent vendor reliability and uneven regulatory enforcement necessitating due diligence,” auditors wrote.Investigators identified repeated instances of contract splitting, a practice in which larger expenses are divided into smaller transactions to avoid spending controls and additional scrutiny.Other problems included spending without required approval, inadequate verification that goods and services were received and sole-source contracts exceeding authorized limits.Auditors also flagged unusually high overtime costs that regularly exceeded the department’s benchmark of 5% of total salaries.The audit raised concerns that gasoline purchased for the embassy’s fleet of 36 vehicles may have gone missing.“Fuel efficiency analysis revealed unusually low mileage, raising concerns that some fuel purchased by the mission may not be used for its intended purpose,” said the report.Record keeping offered little reassurance.Paper travel logs “were not always complete or reliable with multiple instances of unrecorded trips and fuel purchases,” auditors wrote. The report did not provide further details about the discrepancies.The findings are the latest in a series of audits of Canadian diplomatic missions following the discovery of a $1.7 million fraud ring at Canada’s Embassy in Haiti in 2017.Thirteen employees were fired following that investigation..Subsequent audits have uncovered questionable spending and financial controls at Canadian missions around the world.At the Canadian Embassy in Addis Ababa, auditors identified an unauthorized $145,000 expense for a party pavilion.In Manila, officials budgeted $500,000 annually for utilities even though actual expenses never exceeded $418,000.Auditors examining the Canadian Embassy in Amman identified suspicious payments to preferred suppliers, including $542,000 paid to a contractor described as a “house painter.”Diplomats in Jakarta were unable to properly balance the embassy’s books and mistakenly paid some contracts two or three times.In Bogota, taxpayers were billed for appliances that were delivered to a private address and subsequently could not be located.“No evidence could be provided to locate these appliances,” auditors wrote.Other audits found bottles of wine disappeared from the Canadian Embassy in Guatemala City, while diplomats in Kingston, Jamaica, approved cost-plus contracts that ultimately ran 50% over budget.The Nairobi audit is the latest critical examination of financial controls within the department overseen by Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.
