SABC signs off on dozens of dodgy contracts worth millions: report
The SABC’s top brass reportedly signed off on ‘dozens’ of dubious high-value contracts just before Christmas 2016 – including a 5-year retainer for website design that amounted to R5.1 million.
Several of these contracts seen by Times Media show that the SABC broke its own procurement rules – as well as those set by the National Treasury – in awarding contracts to companies ‘on the fly’ during the festive season.
One company, Infonomix, was paid R5.1 million to redesign seven SABC websites as part of a five-year contract. The company charged almost R640,000 VAT, despite not being registered for VAT, the report said.
The SABC has a long history of signing off on irregular contracts, with a Parliamentary report on the broadcaster revealing that millions of rands worth of contracts had been signed off on by the company’s executives.
Most of these contracts were approved by controversial executive Hlaudi Motsoeneng and acting CEO James Aguma.
According to the Times, the contracts this time around were signed off by acting chief financial officer Audrey Raphela and the SABC’s group executive for commercial enterprises, Tshifhiwa Mulaudzi.
In an earlier version of this story it was reported that auditing firm SekelaXabiso benefited from the broadcaster’s free-wheeling contract signing.
SelekaXabiso has pointed out to that this was not the case.
Times Live reported that SekelaXabiso started billing the SABC before its nine-month contract worth R9.8 month was signed on December 23. SelekaXabiso pointed out that these were pro-forma invoices as opposed to tax invoices, which were submitted on 18 January.
We apologise for carrying the error.
Read: Court fed up with SABC Motsoeneng appeal – dismisses case with costs
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