State attorney’s office probed for R80bn collusion

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently issued a proclamation for the SIU to investigate malfeasance at the state attorney’s office from 2013.

The SIU is now looking into whether unlawful transactions had taken place and whether there was “intentional or negligent loss of public money or damage to public property”.

The proclamation instructs the SIU to reclaim the losses suffered by the state from any officials implicated.

Masutha said suspicions were confirmed when word spread about the imminent SIU investigation and “in some of the regions, the moment they heard the SIU was coming to investigate — even before the investigation started — they started dropping some claims completely. They are running away.”

An insider in the department of justice noted that the problem had long been flagged but “there was no political will to deal with it”.

Masutha said there had been efforts before his tenure as justice minister to deal with the matter, but “we are dealing with some of the smartest people, who can elude the system”.

Eastern Cape health superintendent-general Thobile Mbengashe said his department had been working with the SIU since noticing a surge in claims between 2012 and 2016, mainly in the Mthatha area.

“We seconded the SIU to our department and allowed them free access to all our systems to check whether there were some patterns of irregularities,” he said.

The SIU found that five lawyers were making over 80% of the claims.

Mbengashe said claims would be recycled too. “Sometimes they will actually file a claim in Mthatha and they will file [the same claim] in Grahamstown or they will file the claim in Bhisho,” he said. — Additional reporting by Aphiwe Deklerk