The Health Sector Anti-Corruption Forum – of which Corruption Watch is a member – has expressed concern at the rising number of fraudulent medical claims, with the complicity of some legal firms, which the Special Investigating Unit has uncovered. These claims potentially cost the Department of Health billions which it can ill afford.
Join Corruption Watch’s Melusi Ncala and the team in a new five-part podcast series, where he discusses the work done towards the second phase of Transparency International’s Land and Corruption in Africa (LCA) project, which runs from 2021 to 2025. We are part of an eight-chapter team – with Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – that successfully completed the first phase from 2014 to 2019. Overall, the LCA project seeks to address land corruption risks and injustices in sub-Saharan Africa.
Corruption Watch has released the first in a new series of five podcasts focusing on its work in Transparency International’s Land and Corruption in Africa project. Find the link to the podcast here, as well as a compilation of our other work in the project.
The Financial Intelligence Centre, in its latest annual report, has revealed the recovery of more than R5.8-billion in criminal proceeds in the last financial year alone. This has been made possible by stronger powers that were enabled by legislative changes in late 2022, as part of the General Laws Amendment Act to address shortcomings in South Africa’s anti-money laundering framework.
South Africa’s current Protected Disclosures Act provides little incentive for employers to investigate whistle-blower tip-offs, either properly or at all, write the authors. And since there is scant likelihood of legislation alone providing sufficient protection for whistle-blowers, it should be bolstered by an independent body which will monitor and ensure employers take reasonable steps to investigate, and act on, disclosures.
Ethical public procurement is an “unassailable priority”, said finance minister Enoch Godongwana in a speech delivered at the National Treasury’s third Public Finance Management Conference, held in late September. An important part of that is consequence management, he said, ensuring that individuals and entities be held accountable for financial misconduct.
The sooner climate and tax justice activists unite and demand beneficial ownership transparency, writes Matti Kohonen for the Tax Justice Network, the more urgently we can put an end to escalating climate crimes like illicit fishing and logging. “These environmental crimes not only threaten the capacity of our carbon sinks to absorb greenhouse gases, they generate profits that result in illicit financial flows: a form of illegal capital flight that occurs when money is illegally earned, transferred, or spent.”
Deviations and expansions in public procurement are not necessarily red flags or signs of irregularities, said Prof Geo Quinot of Stellenbosch University at the recent webinar launch of Corruption Watch’s third procurement risk trends report. However, in the case of Transnet, they definitely were.
A new corporate anti-corruption guide, developed by Business Leadership South Africa and the Gordon Institute of Business Science, may very well provide the impetus the business sector needs to get its act together and work cohesively towards cutting down on corruption. The two organisations envision the guide as being “the launchpad for a much-needed discussion on how to create a corruption-resistant business sector.”