By: Matthew H. Turry
The Liberia Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners over the weekend concluded a three day annual Continuous Professionals Education (CPE) conference which was held at the Conference Hall of the Internal Audit Agency (IAA) in Congo Town under the theme, “Together, Reducing Fraud Nationwide with over 60 participants attending.
Giving the overview of the conference, the Financial Secretary of the ACFE-Liberia, Madame Charlotte Pearson Weah said the conference was organized to provide a platform geared towards refreshing and broadening the minds of the Certified Fraud Examiners, association members, internal and external auditors, attorneys/ lawyers, law enforcement institutions, banking and business staffs, securities, accountants, detectives, investigators Risk Management, and Compliance Officers amongst others.
According to Madam Weah, the Anti-fraud training conference is to enhance modern fraud investigation and examination techniques as well as encouraging everyone to act with integrity and to perform their work in a professional manner.
“Fraud is one of the major obstacles to the growth and development of institutions around the world as billions of dollars are lost to theft and fraud related cases, and it is one of the contributing factors to the collapse of flourishing institutions and nations”, she noted.
Speaking at the Anti-Fraud conference, the Auditor General of the Republic of Liberia, P. Garswa Jackson, hailed the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) – Liberia for its efforts towards conducting such training for Anti-fraud professionals. He noted that the training will empower the beneficiaries with the requisite investigative techniques to help reduce fraud in Liberia. He urged the ACFE-Liberia members to remain integrity and ethical minded.
Also speaking the President of the Liberia Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Atty. Augustine G. Chenoway said it is the responsibility of the ACFE- Liberia to conduct an Anti-fraud annual training to enable members to obtain the credit hours basically in technical and ethical topics.
According to Atty. Chenoway, the organization is required professionally to file 20 Continuous Professionals Education credits hours annually. He explained that failure to submit one’s CPE hours to the international body on an annual basis, professional license earned could be suspended and subsequently revoked. He noted that ACFE-Liberia is the mother body of the certified Fraud Examiners (CFEs) in Liberia to provide training and regulations to its members.
The training also brought together, as panelists, a pool of professionals with extensive knowledge and experience in various disciplines that are closely associated with fighting fraud, waste and abuse both in the public and private sectors of Liberia. Amongst these panelists include, John B. S. Davies, President and CEO of the Liberia Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI) and also former President of the West Africa Bankers Associations (WABA), and CEO of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital Dr. Jerry Brown, among others, all of whom presented on fraud in their various sectors of work.
For his part, the Executive Director for Audit Services at the Internal Audit Agency, Amos Quermoullue reaffirmed the IAA’s commitment to strengthening existing partnership with the ACFE-Liberia towards the continuous capacity building of Anti-Fraud professionals in the country. Quermoullue noted that his institution will continue partnering with ACFE-Liberia to ensure more intensive training in fighting fraud.
He challenged the leadership of ACFE-Liberia to go beyond the regular Continuous Professionals Education (CPE) training for Certified Examiners and begin to engage and partner with institutions tasked to fight fraud, and follow up on the outcome of some of the fraud investigations in the country.
Comments are closed.