(Credit: The Citizen)
31 Johannesburg officials have been implicated in a multi-million rand kickbacks scandal involving a single service provider.
As The Citizen reports, the city’s mayor, Herman Mashaba, has revealed that he “had caught out 31 officials who allegedly received R2.7 million (€1,830,048) in kickbacks from a single service provider registered on the City’s and Municipal Owned Entities (MOEs) database.”
The officials, who had been put in charge of placing departmental orders with the service provider, had colluded with the company “to inflate the quotations to include their cut.” In some cases, “goods were ordered and not delivered despite being paid for.”
The Mondeor-based service provider received over R20 million (€1,355,591), which should have been paid for the supply of a wide range of office supplies, including printer cartridges, toners, laptops and desktop computers. Mashaba revealed that, in 2014, the provider was paid R6 million (€406,817) for 500 desktop computers, which “were never delivered” but were “allegedly sold to other companies.”
The kickbacks scandal was unearthed after documents were seized during a raid on the service provider, conducted by members of the Hawks, along with metropolitan police and city officials. At least 37 computers were also confiscated during the raid, worth R750,000 (€50,834).
Mashaba explained that the kickbacks had been paid “in the form of Shoprite money transfers, First National Bank e-wallet payments, cash payments and transfers to individual accounts as each official allegedly had their preferred method of payment.”
The largest portion of the money went to officials in the department of Group Information Communication Technology and Information Management. One such official received an alleged R1 million (€67,779) through a single transaction.
“I want to eliminate corrupt elements throughout the City, including investigating illicit deals and contracts that were secured by the previous administration and this includes our technology space,” Mashaba said.
“We are going to open criminal cases against the employees and the service provider and ensure they face the full might of the law.”
