The Special Investigating Unit (SIU), the state’s corruption-fighting investigating unit that has been weighed down by a dire shortage of skilled forensic investigators, wants its funding model to be reviewed, warning that the current structure poses a major risk to its operations.
The SIU falls under the department of justice & correctional services and has come to the fore in recent times leading hundreds of investigations into Covid-19-related procurement and tender irregularities.
Its most recent high-profile investigation led to the resignation of Zweli Mkhize as health minister after he was implicated in a corruption scandal involving the awarding of a R150m contract to associates of his.
However, the unit has been struggling to recover R619m of debt, mainly from municipalities and provincial governments, which is likely to hurt its finances and its ability to pay for top talent.
The SIU has a total of 630 approved posts, but employs just 532 people at present. There are 50 vacancies in its core programme, which includes investigations.
Investigations are based on proclamations issued by the president, and the entities investigated have to foot the bill. However, these entities argue that they do not ask for the probes and often the extra spending cannot be accommodated in their budgets.
The funding challenges mean that the SIU could struggle to recruit the forensic investigators and accountants it desperately needs to handle the enormous number of probes, which often involve sophisticated crimes.
Legislative amendments have been mooted to strengthen the ability of the SIU to collect debt. But it has signalled that relying on payments from the entities it investigates is not sustainable.
At the end of the 2020/2021 financial year there was R619m gross debt outstanding, SIU head Andy Mothibi said in the organisation’s annual report for the 2020/2021 financial year tabled in parliament at the weekend. He said the outstanding amount was significant given that its total revenue for the financial year was R756m.
“The SIU has formally engaged with the National Treasury in this regard and is exploring various ways of how to amend or enhance the funding model, in order to guarantee longer-term financial sustainability,” Mothibi said.
It is unclear what the proposed new model would look like, but it is likely to include an increased annual allocation by the state. The SIU was allocated about R438m in the most recent budget vote of the department.
Mothibi said despite struggling to collect debt, the SIU is in a relatively strong position as some cash resources were built up over the past few years. At the end of the year, the SIU had a bank balance of R742m and a surplus of R68m, bringing the total accumulated surplus in the balance sheet to R836m.
“However, this has the potential to rapidly change as it is planned to increase human capital resources over the next few years in order to meet the high demand of incoming investigations,” Mothibi said.
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