The Auditor General carried out a special audit of the fees paid by the Ministry of Legal Affairs for legal services during the period May 2015 to August 2020. He found 71 contracts valued at $170.828 million that were awarded to 26 Attorneys-at-law and law firms using the sole source method of procurement, instead of the application of competitive bidding procedures, as provided for by the Procurement Act.
In today’s article we discuss the Auditor General’s report on the matter.
Request for special audit
By letter dated 24 August 2020, the Attorney General wrote to the Auditor General requesting a special audit of the fees paid for legal services by the Ministry of Legal Affairs under the previous Administration. Two days earlier at a virtual media briefing, the Attorney General had disclosed that the previous Administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars in private retainer contracts and that a forensic audit would have to be conducted to determine whether these payments were properly made. He cited several cases where the Ministry entered into contracts for the provision of legal services in relation to a number of high-profile political cases.