Watchdog fights BEE scammers
The B-BBEE Commission has come out swinging at verification companies that are complicit in circumventing the B-BBEE Act.
The watchdog has also called on government and public entities to enhance due diligence processes to detect and reject invalid B-BBEE claims made by entities during procurement and public private partnership processes to ensure compliance with the act.
Moipone Kgaboesele, who heads the investigations and enforcement of the B-BBEE Commission, said the commission’s call followed public concerns that B-BBEE seemed to benefit those that were not intended under the law, which included foreigners, permanent residents, those with refugee/ asylum status and white people claiming to be black.
“The B-BBEE Commission will be conducting site visits to check compliance status of entities it has previously found to have violated the B-BBEE Act and where it has received tip-offs to eradicate this illegal conduct.”
Kgaboesele alluded that her office had dealt with cases that showed the extent to which entities would go to achieve a higher B-BBEE status or to appear B-BBEE compliant for purposes of accessing contracts, with some verification professionals being complicit in most of the cases.
“This conduct was rife in the early stages of the B-BBEE Commission around 2016/2017 but we are now seeing verification professionals becoming more vigilant in improving the quality of the verifications and reporting entities that attempt to cut corners.
“Misrepresentation and fronting are serious criminal offences,” Kgaboesele said.
The watchdog also sought to clarify the issue of Chinese people who benefit from state contracts.
“It is only Chinese people who were born in South Africa before 1994 who were classified as coloureds, hence they are included in the definition of ‘black people’ as coloureds by virtue of a court case initiated in 2007,” Kgaboesele said.