State corruption busters fail… again

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) has expressed disappointment that none of the cases that were investigated and prosecuted by the government Anti-Corruption Task Team were resolved through conviction of the offenders, reports The Citizen.

The committee said it was shocked to find that of all the finalised case were settled through plea bargaining, which meant that the offenders went scot-free.

“None of the cases were fully prosecuted through convictions, meaning that all of them are outcomes where corrupt people have negotiated their way out of prison, which largely defeats the objective of using sentencing as a deterrent against corruption, “the committee chairperson, Themba Godi said yesterday.

Godi said the case of former SAPS procurement head, General Hamilton Hlela, is of grave concern to the committee. He said the fact that Hlela was fined R80 000 for a bribery he allegedly facilitated in the awarding of a R1 billion contract was unforgiveable. He said there are many other cases that the ACTT did a shabby job for which the government political leadership had to answer.

Previously the ACTT was found to have neglected its duty to investigate and report on corruption in the government departments and state-owned enterprises such as Eskom, Denel and Prasa. The ACTT was once co-chaired by Hawks former boss, Berning Ntlemeza.

Godi yesterday said his committee might asked the political leadership responsible for the ACTT to appear before the committee to answer for the team’s failure to do its work. He said it appeared that there was a “lack of political leadership over the process to make its impact felt on the ground and in the eyes of the public,” he said.

“Going forward, Scopa will be meeting with the ACTT on a quarterly basis to make sure that the Committee keeps tabs on the work that they do because the fight against corruption is very important,”Godi said.

The department officials agreed to the committee that state of affairs in the team’s work was not good. “Our worry is that it why it needed Parliament to probe this matter for them to tell us the wrong doing that had been taking place. Why the group of Ministers head by Jeff Radebe did not pick up these matters in their monitoring reports they get quarterly,” Godi said.

This impression that people that we are not serious about fighting corruption is not unfounded as shown by the work of the ACTT,” he added.

– Caxton News Service