Lobby group Public Interest SA has written to the public protector requesting an independent probe to establish whether public procurement prescripts were breached during the procurement of IT services by the office of the chief justice (OCJ).
Business Day’s sister newspaper, the Sunday Times, revealed that three former top officials from the office who were crucial in arranging a R225m IT tender for multinational media and technology organisation Thomson Reuters benefited from the deal.
Thomson Reuters is still to respond to a request for comment.
The three were named as former CFO Casper Coetzer, former spokesperson Nathi Mncube and former case management director Yvonne van Niekerk. They are alleged to have started ZA Square, which is subcontracted to Thomson Reuters in the same deal.
Through their subcontract they are set to earn 30% of the value of the deal, or at least R67.5m. It is unclear what work they have to perform on the contract.
The office of the chief justice issued a statement on Sunday saying it is gathering all relevant information relating to the matter and seeking legal advice. “At the appropriate time, the OCJ will inform the public on the matter. We can assure the public that the state funds relating to this matter are safe,” it said.
However, Public Interest SA said, this is not enough. In a letter addressed to the public protector, the organisation said the office has failed to commit to anything.
The said officials, who have since left the employ of the OCJ, were directly responsible for the planning, adjudication and oversight of the project before their exit from the OCJ.
— Public Interest SA
“While we take cognisance of a statement issued by the OCJ, in which the OCJ undertakes to investigate the matter, it is important to note that the OCJ does not commit to a return date for issuance of a statement regarding outcomes of said investigations,” the letter said.
The organisation said it is of the view that an independent investigation by the public protector would not only help further strengthen trust in public institutions, but would vindicate and safeguard the inherent public interest in the matter.
Public Interest SA said it has since established prima facie evidence of transgression of public procurement laws and applicable regulations. It argues that the office did not have lawful justification to embark on a “single-source” procurement process in its procurement of CaseLines — a cloud-based digital evidence collection and case management platform that allows for court documents to be filed from multiple repositories and disseminated digitally, primarily to officers of the courts — in that requirements for deviation from prescribed procurement processes were never fulfilled.
The organisation said the office violated sections of the constitution and the National Treasury practice note.
The three implicated senior officials benefited from the procurement in that they were appointed subcontractors to Thomson Reuters — proprietors of the CaseLines platform — in circumstances that raise serious conflict of interest concerns.
“The said officials, who have since left the employ of the OCJ, were directly responsible for the planning, adjudication and oversight of the project before their exit from the OCJ,” the letter said, adding that section 9(2) of the preferential procurement policy, which regulates subcontracting by prospective bidders, was transgressed.
TimesLive
