By Peter Egwuatu

Shareholders of Oando Plc are likely to bear the cost of the forensic audit that Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, has recommended after its long investigation into a petition filed by Ansbury Inc and AlhajiDahiru Mangal against the company.

The SEC finally publicized the acclaimed findings of six months long investigation into Oando in the past week, with steep penalties which Oando has rebutted in a press statement.

Amongt other things, the company has been slammed with a N160 million bill to enable the SEC conduct a forensic audit on its financials.

According to Oando,  ‘the cost implication of the forensic audit (N160,000,000), which is to be borne by the company is onerous, unnecessary and irresponsible in light of the above submissions and not the best use of shareholder funds at this time.’

Information reaching the media shows that the SEC has already selected a five company panel of forensic auditors. However, Oando is fighting back this decision.

Oando has confirmed that it wasn’t carried along on the panel selection, it has not received a scope of work and timeline for the audit and accordingly a justification for the N160,000,000 bill.

In Oando’s most recent statement it states “having declared to the public that it has acted drastically to suspend the shares of Oando PLC due to its “weighty” findings in the course of its investigations, SEC then concludes that a forensic audit is necessary in order to investigate whether its findings are true. This is a clear contradiction.’

Oando has questioned how the SEC has arrived at its findings if it cannot be sure of the veracity or otherwise of those findings and how did it ascribe the appropriate level of weight to be given to those findings, enough to warrant an immediate suspension followed by a technical suspension of the shares of the Company, if those findings are still mere allegations at this point.

The company further flaws the decision of the SEC to conduct a forensic audit on the basis of bias; by publishing its findings, requiring an audit to validate these findings and then selecting the panel that will conduct the audit, the SEC has already skewed the results of the audit.  What’s more, by making its findings public it would be difficult for the forensic audit panel to truly act independently.  Put together and at this time there is a clear conflict of interest with SEC overseeing this forensic audit.

In a press statement issued on October 24, 2017, Oando responded in detail to the SEC’s finding’s giving reasons why the penalties are unjustifiable and unnecessarily steep.