Tshwane Metro is to lay criminal charges against its former chief financial officer (CFO), Umar Banda, for what it calls ‘abuse of the municipal finance management act’.

The municipality’s move comes after an adverse audit opinion relating to the financial year spanning July 2021 to June 2022 by Auditor-General Tsakane Maluleka.

The report revealed that the metro deliberately filed an incorrect budget for its actual amount spent and that it did not correctly prepare and disclose its net cash flows from operating, investing and financing activities.

Metro mayor Randall Williams says the metro is taking the report seriously, adding that in the last two years, the municipality had received unqualified audits consecutively under his stewardship.

“The decline in the city’s audit performance is unacceptable. As the political leadership, it is critical that we step up, take responsibility and ensure that we immediately plot a path towards achieving better audit outcomes,” says Williams.

He says the municipality is putting measures in place to rectify the mistakes the Auditor-General has highlighted.

The measures include the appointment of professional external auditors who will provide support to the auditing process and to start a process of appointing a full-time city manager as it was flagged by the Auditor-General.

“The appointment process is for filling of section 56 top management positions including the CFO. This recruitment process has been initiated and will be concluded in the first half of this year. We have already begun the implementation of these steps and will continue to do so in the coming year.”

Williams says that receiving strong audit outcomes is the basis of good governance, adding that the municipality will ensure that it achieves a better outcome in the future.

The adverse audit opinion comes after Banda was suspended and later dismissed for submitting non-compliant annual financial statements to the Auditor-General on behalf of the city.

During the 2020/ 2021 financial year, the Auditor-General’s acting business unit leader for Gauteng, Dorothy Rampopo, flagged Tshwane for incurring the larger chunk of irregular expenditure of R2.7b, followed by Johannesburg’s R1.1b.

The irregularly spent R2.7b, however, showed a decline from the R2.9b it incurred in the 2018/2019 financial period.