Digital technologies in auditing: education without fraudsters

The Head of State places special emphasis on the targeted use of budgetary funds, including those allocated for the development of the education sector.

In line with this objective, the Committee for Internal State Audit continues its comprehensive work on the application and enhancement of the Online Budget Monitoring module.

Since the beginning of the current year, the Committee and its territorial departments have reviewed over 24,000 budget payments in the education sector, which allowed for the prevention of misuse of funds totaling 256.8 million tenge in real time. These violations were committed as a result of dishonest actions by certain accountants.

These are funds that should be used to develop the education system by ensuring decent pay for teachers, but there are cases when they fall into the hands of unscrupulous individuals.

For example, monitoring of budget payments revealed an egregious case in the capital, where one of the accountants was enrolled in two schools at once and charged himself an additional salary for an accountant, a purchasing manager and a laboratory assistant.

As a result, this individual illegally received over 12 million tenge. Despite attempts to conceal the misconduct, the individual was eventually exposed.

Thanks to swift response measures, the funds were recovered and the offender was dismissed.

Unfortunately, accountants in the Almaty and Kyzylorda regions — despite recent high-profile detentions and criminal proceedings — have not drawn conclusions and continue attempts to divert budgetary funds for personal gain.

In just two districts of Kyzylorda region, fraudulent actions by accountants were stopped, involving the illegal transfer of more than 45 million tenge to their personal accounts.

In the Almaty region, another case was prevented, where over 9.6 million tenge were illegally transferred to two members of the management of educational institutions.

Only after the violations were uncovered did the education department provide explanations, claiming the payments were due to a technical error.

The revealed facts confirm the importance of using this digital tool and further strengthening monitoring of budget funds.

For the population, this means that taxes will be spent strictly for their intended purpose, thereby ensuring the protection of the interests of our children and teaching staff.

It is worth noting that in order to ensure the preventive component, the Committee has established full cooperation with the Anti-Corruption Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and up to 10 working days are given to eliminate unjustified payments to monitoring facilities.

In this regard, the Committee considers it important to share some practical aspects of the OBM system’s application. In particular, the Committee plans to demonstrate to the public and participants of the budget process how an official OBM notification sent to monitored entities is structured.