Estina scandal officials must pay
Mkhwebane orders premier to take action
PUBLIC protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has ordered ANC secretary-general and Free State premier Ace Magashule to act on government officials implicated in the Gupta-linked multimillion-rand Vrede Dairy Farm scandal for “gross negligence”.
The Vrede Farm controversy is about the R220-million given to Estina for the project, R30-million which was allegedly channelled towards the Gupta’s lavish wedding in Sun City in 2012.
The dairy farm project is also the subject of a Hawks state capture investigation, which saw the crime fighting unit raid Magashule’s office and the Free State department of agriculture last month.
Last month, the Free State High Court ordered the freezing of the provincial government’s assets amount to R220million, including the farm in Vrede.
Mkhwebane in her report, among other things, found that:
● The department of agriculture in the FS did not enter into a Public Private Partnership with Estina in the context of Treasury regulations required;
● The HoD of the department did not follow necessary procurement procedures as required by the Constitution, the Public Finances Management Act (PMFA) and Treasury regulations;
● The payment to Estina did not pass the test of Treasury prescripts;
● The agreement between the department and Estina was invalid and did not comply with procurement processes;
● Despite the AG prescribing that sections 81 and 86 of the PMFA be followed when there’s allegations of misconduct, the accounting officer of Free State agriculture went ahead to pay a further R144million to Estina; and
● As such, there was lack of effective, efficient and transparent systems of financial and risk management and internal control, resulting in gross negligence and maladministration.
Mkhwebane ordered Magashule to take disciplinary action against implicated officials and submit a report to her office.
Magashule was also instructed to establish the number of cows initially procured and found in April last year at Vrede Farm and to submit an implementation plan within 30 days from yesterday.
In her report, Mkhwebane said her office did not investigate key issues because of capacity and financial constraints.
This led the DA to label Mkhwebane’s report as a “whitewash of corruption”.
“There has been a large amount of evidence of grand corruption and money laundering relating to Vrede that is already in the public domain,” said DA leader Mmusi Maimane in a statement.
“Yet none of this seems to have been investigated by the public protector. When I took the intended beneficiaries to meet with the public protector in December last year, she promised to act in good faith and to conduct a comprehensive investigation.
“It is therefore unconscionable that her report is nothing more than a whitewash of a grand project of corruption and looting,” Maimane said.