PIA boss wrong man to appoint independent auditors for Saturnia Regna Pension Fund

Sat, 03 Jun 2017 13:17:01 +0000

Editor,

In as much as I agree with the government’s decision to direct the Pensions and Insurance Authority (PIA) to appoint an independent auditor to assess the financial and operational governance of Saturnia Regna Pension Fund within 30 days, but I take serious exception to the PIA’s responsibility to appoint an independent auditor because the Authority appears to be complicit and party to the Saturnia Regna Pension Fund’s scams it had failed to investigate in the past.

 I think the Minister of Finance needs to be more sensitive to the Board of Trustees’ predicament at Saturnia Regna Pension Fund.

By directing the PIA to appoint an independent auditor, was he

insinuating that PIA officials were graft-free and holier than the

Board of Trustees despite the former failing to act after being informed by the latter that title deeds for 51 properties belonging to the Trust Fund were not in the name of the Fund?

 Perhaps, Finance Minister Felix Mutati should instead have ordered the Office of the Auditor General to carry out an independent forensic audit on both PIA and Saturnia Regna Pension Fund in relation to the Fund’s financial and operational governance within 30 days (“Probe pension scam – State”, Daily Nation, May 31, 2017).

I write to express my displeasure at the possibility of PIA appointing a complicit and compromised audit firm to probe the scams at Saturnia Regna Pension Fund. Scam probing and resolution require an investigator with unquestionable character who all parties have respect for. This calls for the services of auditors and investigators who have consistently demonstrated trust, integrity, accountability and faith with their clients.

The PIA Registrar Martin Libinga is a man who’s been in charge while alleged corruption carried on at Saturnia Regna Pension Fund for years to the detriment of 34,000 pension-holders in Zambia. We cannot forget his inability to act on the PIA Inspection Report of 11 to 19 April 2016 on issues concerning Saturnia Regna Pension Fund’s financial and operational governance, depriving his countrymen and women of the right to their pension savings when the sum of K399,472,260.00 was covertly transferred into offshore accounts in Europe without the

authority of the Minister of Finance and the knowledge of the Board of Trustees.

The PIA Registrar did not act then, but instead and much later, requested the Board of Trustees to ask the Minister to give authority seemingly in retrospect (“There are more questions than answers”, Daily Nation, May 31, 2017).

It took the Board of Trustees’ maturity and patience in legal

shenanigans with Fund managers and Fund administrators to avert a situation similar to that which the PIA Registrar is now tasked to appoint an independent auditor to probe and resolve at Saturnia Regna Pension Fund. What this task for the PIA Registrar to appoint an independent auditor to probe the Fund’s scams has done is to give credibility to Martin Libinga who’s performed abysmally in the oversight office when it comes to matters nefarious and venal at PIA and Saturnia Regna Pension Fund.

Mubanga Luchembe,

LUSAKA