By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Auditor-General (AG) Tsakani Maluleke has briefed Parliament’s Standing Committee on the Auditor-General on steps her office would take to audit the disaster relief funds allocated to KwaZulu-Natal.
Maluleka said they wanted to create strong controls to prevent any corruption in procurement and use of funds for relief in the province.
But if they find corruption and malfeasance, they will not hesitate to refer the cases to the law enforcement agencies.
She said when they started auditing Covid-19 PPE funds in April and May 2020, by June there was a report on this and by December of that year there were already people in the dock charged with fraud and corruption.
She said they have powers to refer corruption cases to the Hawks, the NPA and the SIU.
They have been working together at the Fusion Centre for the last two years.
“The powers of referral do allow us to refer matters to the Hawks, the SIU, the NPA, the Financial Intelligence Centre and a number of other public bodies. When we did Covid-19 audits what worked well was to share insight, our information, our findings, our analysis on databases with those bodies and to give them the opportunity to then act on them.
“What we have seen on the work we did then, people who tried to defraud Sassa were held accountable pretty much quickly, within months of us doing this work. We did this work in April and May and the report on it in June. By the time we all went away on holiday (in December) there were people in the dock in relation to Sassa and UIF Ters scheme,” said Maluleke.
“What that tells you is that we can continue to find ways of deepening our relationships with these public bodies and refer matters as the law allows us to do so. We will do this as part of this audit work now. We will implement those powers and give effects to the standing arrangement we have with those public bodies,” she said.
Maluleke said she would complement the team that is already in KZN with a number of specialists from Pretoria.
The specialists will be from Information Systems Management, experts in forensics and fraud detection, engineers and quantity surveyors.
Committee members were encouraged by the AG’s positive attitude – but they rightfully drew attention to the fact that emergency supply contracts entered into by municipalities in terms of Municipal Supply Chain Management Regulation 36 are a major source of corruption and maladministration.
Meanwhile Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has confirmed the R1 billion allocated to KwaZulu-Natal for relief efforts during floods will not be new money.
Godongwana said this money was allocated during the budget in February and it was in the form of various grants in departments.
He said this was not new money as some had been suggesting, but funds that were already in the budget.
Political parties have, for the last few weeks, since President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the state of disaster in KZN, demanded to see the R1bn.
This was after speculation mounted that the money has not been distributed to the province for relief efforts. But Godongwana, who was replying to a written question from the DA, said this was not new money.