THE Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has welcomed the Special Tribunal order confirming that assets of Joburg businessman Hamilton Ndlovu and others remain preserved.
SIU spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said the Special Tribunal has found that it would not be in the interest of justice to allow them to retain possession of preserved assets pending an outcome of an appeal to the High Court to overturn the final forfeiture order of preserved assets.
In June last year, the tribunal ordered that 19 personal protective equipment (PPE) tenders amounting to R172 million awarded by the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) to Ndlovu and associated companies are declared invalid and unlawful.
The tribunal set aside the contracts and ordered that Ndlovu and associated companies pay back R158 million with interest.
The tribunal further ordered that the preserved properties and funds held by Ndlovu, Zaisan Kaihatsu and Bugatti Security Services and Projects to the value of R42 million be forfeited to the state.
Kganyago said the SIU and NHLS applied to the Special Tribunal to confirm that the preservation order remains operative despite an appeal by Ndlovu and others to the High Court to overturn the forfeiture order.
He said on 31 January, the Special Tribunal ordered that the 7 June 2022 order still stands and the assets remained preserved.
“The president of the Special Tribunal ruled that Ndlovu and others did not dispute the serious allegations of procurement fraud, and therefore had no legal basis for resisting the preservation order,” said Kganyago.
He said this emanated from their investigation into corruption allegations and the circumstances in which eight companies directly and indirectly linked to Ndlovu had obtained contracts worth a total of R172 742 275 for PPE from the NHLS.
“The SIU investigation established that the contracts were obtained by abusing the emergency procurement procedures that were adopted by the NHLS to respond to the Covid-19 disaster during the first half of 2020.
“The SIU obtained and analysed the bank statements of the front companies and of Ndlovu and of other companies and individuals linked to him. The analysis showed that, apart from an amount of about R15 milllion that appears to have been used for the purchase of PPE, the funds received from the NHLS were not used to obtain supplies of PPE to deliver upon the contracts to the NHLS. Instead, almost 90% of the funds flowed to Ndlovu for his own use,” he said.
