{"id":12296,"date":"2012-05-11T21:12:45","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T19:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=12296"},"modified":"2012-05-14T10:51:40","modified_gmt":"2012-05-14T08:51:40","slug":"madonsela-to-probe-e-toll-tenders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/12296\/madonsela-to-probe-e-toll-tenders\/","title":{"rendered":"Madonsela to probe e-toll tenders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela<\/a> has decided to conduct a preliminary investigation into complaints of tender irregularities with the Gauteng e-toll system, her office said on Friday.<\/p>\n

She would investigate allegations of an “improper relationship” between Swedish companies involved in the arms deal and the Austrian company Kapsch TrafficCom<\/a>, her spokeswoman Kgalalelo Masibi said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“In this regard the public protector will be able to determine among others whether no other institution is investigating similar allegations,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Thereafter, the public protector will determine whether the allegations merit a formal investigation.”<\/p>\n

This followed complaints lodged by Democratic Alliance<\/a> MP Jack Bloom, director for the Institute for Accountability in SA Paul Hoffman and the recently resigned chief executive the SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral)<\/a> Nazir Alli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bloom welcomed the announcement on Friday evening.<\/p>\n

“I hope that this is a first step towards a wider investigation into all the contracts involved in the e-tolling,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We need to know if any high-level politician was unjustly enriched in this process.”<\/p>\n

The Sunday Times reported last weekend that politically connected companies stood to benefit from the e-tolling contracts.<\/p>\n

According to the newspaper, these included Tsebo Holdings, South Africa’s largest catering company, 15 percent of which was owned by Nozala Investments and 15 percent by Lereko.<\/p>\n

It reported that Nozala was headed by Salukazi Dakile-Hlongwane, a trustee of the African National Congress front company Chancellor House, and that Lereko was owned by former environment minister Valli Moosa and Chancellor House trustee Popo Molefe.<\/p>\n

Other companies which stood to benefit were Vodacom<\/a> and GijimaAST<\/a>, of which was 35 percent owned by billionaire businessman Robert Gumede<\/a>, which won the two largest sub-contracts.<\/p>\n

The 33 sub-contractors were signed up by the electronic toll consortium (ETC)<\/a>, after it was awarded the main R6.6 billion contract by Sanral in 2009. The ETC is responsible for collecting e-tolls.<\/p>\n

The Sunday Times also reported that a major beneficiary was Kapsch TrafficCom, which owned 40 percent of the main contractor.<\/p>\n

The company confirmed to the newspaper that, until 2000, it was owned by arms company SAAB<\/a>, which admitted in June to paying bribes of more than R24 million to ensure it was picked to supply Gripen jets to South Africa in the arms deal.<\/p>\n

Alli resigned on Monday, just over a week after the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa)<\/a> was granted an urgent interdict to stop the launch of the system.<\/p>\n

The project has since been put on hold.<\/p>\n

Reasons were not given for Alli’s resignation. He will remain in office until June 3.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

SANRAL\u2019s E-tag refunds total R25 million<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SANRAL appoints Koos Smit as CEO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Busa welcomes e-toll task force<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Saab AB denies any link to e-tolling project<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has decided to conduct a preliminary investigation into complaints of tender irregularities with the Gauteng e-toll system<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2780,26,2777,2775,2776,2779,2781,2778,1967,27],"class_list":["post-12296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-gijimaast","tag-headline","tag-jack-bloom","tag-kapsch-trafficcom","tag-kgalalelo-masibi","tag-popo-molefe","tag-robert-gumede","tag-salukazi-dakile-hlongwane","tag-thuli-madonsela","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12296"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12299,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12296\/revisions\/12299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}