Limpopo municipality blows R30 million to recover missing R5.4 million

The Sekhukhune district municipality in Limpopo has allegedly spent almost R30 million to recover R5.4 million.

This has angered opposition parties following a damning report in council by the municipal public accounts committee (Mpac) on 30 January.

R5.4 million in question

The investigations comes after R5.4 million mysteriously disappeared from the municipal accounts on 5 July, 2018.

The probe discovered that the millions were illegally transferred to several business accounts without the knowledge of the municipal manager and the mayor, Stan Ramaila, who was at the time in China on a government business trip with premier Stan Mathabatha.

Accounts to individuals

The accounts into which the monies were transferred were found to have been attached to individuals who are neither employees of the municipality, nor service providers.

In light of this, several officials were suspended for the questionable transactions. But some are said to be still working at the municipality – a move that questions the effectiveness of the application of consequence management by the municipality.

Later, in 2018, the municipality revealed that it had recovered most of the money. It said the money still to be recovered was R663 707.82.

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This was not well received by the opposition, which said spending R30 million to recover R5.4 million had corruption written all over it.

Suspicions

“We suspect there are senior politicians working in cahoots with officials in the legal division to defraud the municipality,” Bolsheviks party general secretary Seun Mogotji told The Citizen yesterday.

“This is a cartel using the municipality as its cash cow. What is even more worrying is that the council had appointed four legal firms to recover the money. But for the past four years, there is nothing to show for their work.

“We suspect there is collusion. We suspect these lawyers are working with some of our officials to drag the investigations so that they could continue milking dry our municipal purse. “If I am not telling the truth about this, let them then explain how R30 million was spent to recover R5.4 million.

We have since reported this fraud case to the Hawks but still nothing came out of it, five years later. Is this a Banana Republic?”

R4.8 million recovered

Yesterday the municipality said it had recovered R4.8 million of the stolen money. It said three officials have been suspended and one was dismissed. “

A case was opened with the police to recover the money and the investigation is still on going,” municipal spokesperson Khomotso Ndlovu said.

He said he was not so sure how much was spent to recover some of the R5.4 million since 2018 as he said he was still waiting for a final report from Mpac on their investigations.

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