The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has warned it may not be paid more than R200 million in costs for its massive probe into COVID-19 PPE corruption and has asked President Cyril Ramaphosa to take note.
SIU head Andy Mothibi sounded the alarm in the unit’s report on its probe into PPE and other contracts worth billions of rand. The report was released on Tuesday.
The SIU charges state institutions for the work it does. So far, it has invoiced for around R84 million but has only been paid only R5.6 million.
Mothibi said in the report that the unit had been in talks with Treasury for the past nine months about recovering its costs for the PPE investigation, but without any success.
Mothibi said the SIU wanted to make President Cyril Ramaphosa aware that the unit was at risk of not being paid for the bulk of around R216 million that was currently outstanding.
He said the SIU needed an intervention in this regard with a view to National Treasury making central funding available to the SIU.
The SIU’s PPE investigation covered thousands of contracts worth more than R14 billion and found that businesses, individuals, state officials, and politicians ‘cynically exploited a public health crisis for personal gain’.
It has so far recovered more than R34 million of an estimated R500 million and prevented losses of R114 million.
Contracts worth R170 million were reviewed and set aside.
-EWN
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