Companies like KPMG should be made an example of, says our chairperson Mavuso Msimang. Speaking at a corporate governance seminar in Johannesburg, he noted that those who were involved in state capture should, after following due process, be given custodial sentences so that they don’t pay fines with money they have stolen.
In Mdantsane, East London, 27 families have been waiting for nine years for RDP houses promised to them. Instead of the six months that they expected, they have been living for nearly a decade in substandard container homes. Ward councillors and municipality representatives have had nothing to say on the matter.
A call for evidence has been issued by the newly-formed People’s Tribunal on Economic Crime, and the first hearings will take place in November. The People’s Tribunal is organised by citizens, and is not a statutory body. It will scrutinise the inter-connected nature of state capture in South Africa, joining the dots over the past four decades from apartheid-era economic crime to the post-apartheid arms deal and the current era of what we call state capture.
Corruption Watch has recently developed a series of informative multi-lingual brochures about corruption in sectors that affect South Africans in fundamental ways. Download then all here.
Today, 15 September, is the International Day of Democracy. It serves as an opportunity to review the state of democracy in the world. Democracy is as much a process as a goal, and only with the full participation of and support by the international community, national governing bodies, civil society and individuals, can the ideal of democracy be made into a reality to be enjoyed by everyone, everywhere.
On 14 September President Jacob Zuma and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) argued in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) against an earlier ruling to reinstate 783 charges of fraud, racketeering and corruption against Zuma. The charges are related to alleged inducements he received in exchange for using his political influence in the awarding of contracts around the 1999 arms deal.
The Ethics Perceptions Survey was developed by the Anti-Intimidation and Ethical Practices Forum to quantitatively capture the perceptions that professionals hold regarding ethics in their society, organisations and professional institutions. The survey also endeavoured to measure perceptions of reporting unethical behaviour and to gauge whether support for ethical conduct and reporting unethical behaviour is forthcoming in organisations in South Africa. Read the report here.
Corruption Watch and the Institute for Security Studies are in Parliament today to ask for stricter criteria for recruitment of the SAPS national commissioner and head of the Hawks, two of the most important functions in a country with rising crime, violence and corruption. The two organisations will also place emphasis on the serial crises of top management in the SAPS and Hawks that is referred to in the National Development Plan of 2012.
We need to come down hard on professionals in the private sector who show the middle finger to society’s values, writes David Lewis, our executive director. We will ask the US department of justice to investigate McKinsey’s conduct in SA, which we believe is in gross contravention of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. and we have submitted a complaint to the ombudsman of the International Finance Corporation, arguing that it failed to comply with its own ethical standards when investing in Net1.