A 52-year-old suspect is expected to appear before the Bloemfontein Magistrates’ Court on 11 February 2022 where he will be facing an allegation of contravening the Public Finance Management Act.
It is alleged that during the course of the regulatory audit in the Department of Health in Bloemfontein, the audit team from the Auditor-General requested information on certain payments to service providers and subsequently queried the procurement processes that were followed.
As a result, an internal investigation followed whereby it was discovered that false or forged ‘requests for payment advices’ were submitted during the period of January 2011 to December 2015 for payments with regards to the service providers.
It is further alleged that no evidence could be found whether the actual services were rendered by the service providers.
The Department of Health was prejudiced and suffered a total loss of more than R8 million which was paid to the service providers.
The matter was then reported to the police and a case was handed over to the Hawks’ Serious Commercial Crime Investigation in Bloemfontein for further investigation which culminated to the suspect handing himself over to the investigators.
He was charged and 16 other accused were arrested in August last year.
