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ALRAQABA . ISSUE 16
Chapter One:
Issues of Administrative Inquiry at the
Entities Subject to Audit
As previously mentioned, jurisprudence and law
have been keen to set up principles to regulate
administrative inquiries and relevant legal
aspects. Despite that, the practical applications
of SAB control have disclosed the occurrence
of committed financial irregularities within the
entities subject to control. These violations are
correlated to a number of errors and problems
that the entities may encounter when conducting
an administrative inquiry. Below is a summary of
these issues:
1. When the entity refrains from conducting
an administrative inquiry on the financial
irregularities committed within.
2. Insisting on refusing SAB’s requisition
to conduct an inquiry on the detected
financial irregularities and instead, providing
payments and justifications for these
irregularities to be submitted before the
relevant investigating authority.
3. Delay in conducting inquiries and failing to
take the required actions in a timely manner
without providing justification in a way that
defeats the purpose of the inquiry. The
entity may take years of delay in performing
the investigation, which in return may lead
to blurring the irregularities’ lines along with
the relevant proof of evidence such as the
death of a prosecution witness of loss of
violation documents.
4. When administrative inquiries lack all details
on the irregularities or all relevant individuals
responsible for said violations, this may lead
to the impunity of certain individuals from
the inquiry. An entity may only resort to an
inquiry with its executives, disregarding the
supervisors, officials, and those who are
responsible for the irregularities.
5. Developing a technical study that only
revolves around the reasons for the
irregularities and ways to address them,
while failing to summon the relevant
individuals to listen to their inputs, then
finalize whether or not they are responsible
for the violation. Or when the entity
summons the alleged violators to elicit
their technical opinion on the issue without
investigating the disciplinary responsibilities
for the violation.
6. Conduct perfunctory investigations for the
financial irregularities through imposing
general questions on the violation or
providing answers that restrain from ruling
on the merit of the investigated disciplinary
responsibility case. The person under
investigation may resort to answering all
the enquirer’s questions with only “I don’t
know.”
7. The invalidity of an inquiry due to failure
to meeting the legal conditions and
requirements. Such as violating the right
to defense through failing to encounter
an employee with the charged violation,
questioning the independence and
impartiality of an inquiry, such as forming
a special inquiry committee consisting of
individuals under investigation.
8. Entities may deliberately frame employees
that have already left the service and
accuse them of the violation to protect their
current staff from being held accountable.
9. The excessive formation of committees to
conduct inquiries on financial irregularities.
It can be derived that the previous issues may
refer to three essential elements; they are:
• Failure of experts or the investigation’s
concerned parties to understand
