Bank employees always dread it when the month is coming to an end. Many will be forced to work overtime to account for the missing sen so that the books can be balanced.

Why aren’t ministries as scrupulous as banks? Ministries deal in billions of ringgits, but their fiscal affairs are in such disarray that officials can spirit out RM18 million every month without anyone noticing.

Even the mistress of a household keeps a better check on her budget.

The RM107 million corruption scandal in the Ministry of Youth and Sports has rocked Putrajaya, but Malaysians are not shocked.

One cynic said, “The only shocking thing was that it took so long to be uncovered. Conversely, as with so many scandals in Putrajaya, the surprise is that the culprits were careless. One would have thought that they would take extra precautions to hide their thefts.”

Reports have suggested problems in auditing and internal communications.

On March 22, the Chief Secretary to the Government said the National Audit Department and the Auditor-General would review the entire auditing process and then perform a random audit of selected ministries. This will take place once Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin sets up his independent investigation team.

This is most confusing.

Aren’t ministries audited annually? Aren’t the experts on the lookout for weaknesses in the system and ways to plug the loopholes? Did previous audits give the Ministry of Youth and Sports a clean bill of health?

If RM107 million could be siphoned out so silently, then the ministry must have been over budgeted. Dishonest officials can pocket the difference between actual operating costs and the amount paid by the taxpayer. These are probably logged as commissions, services rendered and overruns.

Just imagine how RM107 million could have improved the state of sports in our schools and universities instead of being spent on Hermes handbags, overseas travel and fast cars.

A statement by the previous sports minister, Shabery Cheek, gives an insight into how communication proceeds within the ministry. He told Bernama that as minister, he had few if any dealings with the middle layer of the ministry. Ministers, he seemed to suggest, only dealt with the upper layers of management.

He said, “Usually, the minister will touch on policies and how to implement them, and the secretary-general will liaise with all the related parties. In this respect, it is not necessary that everything will be known to the minister or the ministry’s secretary-general.”

Shabery was virtually admitting that he did not know what was happening with his staff and that he was therefore not a good leader.

The middle tier of management provides the link between the top and the bottom tiers. Have the middle managers been left to their own devices and allowed to control enormous budgets without any top-down scrutiny?

Poor leadership at the top and poor control of the middle managers give ample opportunities for errant middle managers to build their own empires.

A break in the chain of communications also means that people in the bottom tier are unable to convey any of their woes to the top.

Shabery is now Minister of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry. Perhaps the Auditor General should scrutinise the books in that ministry.

Despite stressing that he accepts responsibility for the situation, Khairy Jamaluddin has refused to resign, saying he was unaware of the scandal. Khairy is really saying that he is not dishonest, but is incompetent, and that is not enough to disqualify him from remaining at the helm of his ministry.

The Volkswagen CEO, Martin Winterkorn, was unaware of the cheating that went on in the lower echelons of his company. He took responsibility and resigned over the emissions scandal last year.

That is the difference between Malaysian and German work ethics.

Mariam Mokhtar is an FMT columnist.