SIU to hand Covid-19 corruption report to Ramaphosa by Friday

President Cyril Ramaphosa will receive the final Special Investigating Unit (SIU) report on alleged widespread corruption related to Covid-19 procurement by the end of the week.

On Tuesday SIU head Andy Mothibi told the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) the report would be handed to the president on Friday.

Ramaphosa had signed a proclamation for the SIU to start the investigation after reports of widespread procurement corruption related to Covid-19.

“The next one will be on December 7 and the final, which we will submit to the president, on December 10. We are hard at work finalising that report so it reaches the president in the time allocated to us by the president,” said Mothibi.

Alleged Covid-19 corruption was uncovered last year in Gauteng when Ramaphosa’s former spokesperson Khusela Diko was implicated through a company owned by her late husband Thandisizwe Diko.

His company Royal Bhaca scored multimillion-rand tenders from the Gauteng department of health for the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE).

Diko has since lost her job as the president’s spokesperson after a disciplinary hearing.

Her link to the provincial health department was through former health MEC Bandile Masuku, with whom she is friends. Masuku has since been sacked because of an SIU investigation into the saga.

Mothibi told Scopa Covid-19 expenditure was at R138bn and they are probing contracts of about R14.8bn.

“Of that R14.8bn worth of irregular contracts, the investigations that have been completed and outcomes have been reached, particularly with regards to referrals of matters to the Special Tribunal. As at the date of this report we have referred about R1.91bn worth of contracts found to be irregular in the investigations.

“Those have been referred to the Special Tribunal to set the contracts aside, to recover the losses state institutions would have suffered,” said Mothibi.

He said most of the alleged irregular procurement contracts awarded and related to Covid-19 were in the provinces.

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