New auditor general to face fallout from ‘most expensive typo’

A new auditor general will have to clean up the mess left by his predecessor, after the Auditor General of Pakistan’s (AGP) office backtracked on a controversial report, which gave an astronomical figure for irregularities unearthed in the federal government’s accounts. Maqbool Ahmed Gondal was sworn in as the country’s 22nd AGP on Monday, at a ceremony held in the Supreme Court. Appointed for a fixed tenure of four years, Mr Gondal will immediately have to deal with the fallout from the AGP office’s U-turn its ‘Consolidated Audit Report of Federal Government for the Audit Year 2024-25’. The original report, released in August this year, contained the illogical figure of irregularities worth Rs376 trillion, which is 3.5 times more than the country’s total gross domestic product (GDP).