Posts

A killer in more ways than one

By Lee-Ann Alfreds It helped bankrupt Greece, wiped out a multi-million rand education aid package to poverty-stricken Tanzania and robbed struggling South Africans of a potential 1.1-million jobs. Yet such is the secrecy that surrounds the global arms industry that very few people are aware of the pernicious impact the international defence sector has on Read more >

A closer look at the Seriti Commission

The Seriti Commission is in the news at the moment, as it continues to investigate allegations of widespread corruption in the strategic defence procurement package (SDPP), colloquially known as the arms deal. Behind the scenes people have worked for months to establish the structures and rules that inform the way the commission will go about Read more >

Political will must back anti-corruption legislation

Source: Polity.org.za The tendency of South Africans to act as if corruption was normal was a serious cause for concern, former National Prosecuting Authority head Vusi Pikoli said on Friday 28 February. He was addressing delegates at an EE Publishers annual lunch in Johannesburg. ”Corruption exists not only in the public sector, but is also Read more >

Not perfect, but commission can still produce results

By Lee-Ann Alfreds His appearance was greeted with fanfare and excitement after months of dry and technical testimony by largely-unknown flunkies and officials. But then, former trade and industry minister Alec Erwin came and went in the blink of an eye – and fears for the credibility of the Arms Procurement Commission went into overdrive. Read more >

New e-book focuses on procurement corruption

Corruption in government procurement processes is a major concern amongst South Africans, as it results in billions of rands of the national budget going down the drain. Many citizens have decided to do something about it – between our launch in January 2012 to the end of January 2014, we have received 465 reports related Read more >

Fighting the good fight

By Lee-Ann Alfreds Their breadth of recall is mind-boggling. Dates, figures, names and irregularities that several official investigations have tried – unsuccessfully – to unravel for over 15 years, these are the details that arms deal activist Terry Crawford-Browne and whistleblower Richard Young readily have at their fingertips. It’s not surprising, though, as both have Read more >

Business must get actively involved in nailing corruption

by David Lewis Corruption is "literally killing us". This was the view of a panellist at a recent Corruption Watch colloquium on business’s role in combating corruption, held at the Gordon Institute of Business Science. "Service delivery protests are a direct consequence of the public resources squandered by corruption," said Mark Lamberti, chairman of Transaction Read more >

Economic crime plagues local business

As a nation, South Africa has many attractive features – and a few undesirable ones too. A fresh survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reveals a few of the latter – bribery and corruption, procurement fraud, cybercrime, insider trading, and more. Titled the 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey, it unpacks economic crime in the country, and was Read more >

Time to stop the rot at the SABC

There is corruption at the highest level of the SABC – confirmed by public protector Thuli Madonsela yesterday when she released a report detailing maladministration and abuse of power and public money in the corridors of the state broadcaster. The document, titled When Governance and Ethics Fail, fingers the SABC's chief operations officer (COO), Hlaudi Read more >