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CORRUPTION NEWS

Regulate big firms doing business with state, says Open Secrets

The South African government’s extensive, but sometimes redundant use of management consultants to help drive its strategic goals once again came under the spotlight recently with the online launch of The Consultants, a report by civil society group Open Secrets. Authored by Zen Mathe, Luvano Ntuli, and Mamello Mosiana, the report looks into the dubious Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Private sector needed at the state capture solutions table

When the state capture commission began its hearings in August 2018, its first witness was National Treasury’s acting chief procurement officer at the time, Ndleleni Mathebula. His testimony was an overview of the state’s public procurement system, its challenges and positives. He placed government’s average annual spending on procurement at R800-billion, and said the degree Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

New Trillian revelations show need for robust public procurement laws

Since 2017, Corruption Watch has been calling for probes into and criminal charges regarding the professional conduct of auditing firms and service providers such as KPMG, McKinsey, Deloitte, and Trillian. These firms and others have been implicated in dodgy dealings with several state owned enterprises including Eskom and Transnet, as well as the South African Read more >

NEWS

SA’s echoes of leaders who plundered their countries

By Mandisi MajavuFirst published in The Conversation One of the shameful achievements of the African National Congress (ANC) in its 25 years of governing post-apartheid South Africa is that it’s living up to the political stereotype of what is wrong with post-colonial Africa – unethical and corrupt African leaders who exercise power through patronage. The widespread corruption Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

The problem of corruption in professional services

By Kwazi Dlamini A recent series of briefs by the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) has shed light on the role that four particular professional service industries have played in enabling corruption – these industries are law, accounting, auditing and management consulting. Among their members are names we have become used to hearing about, and not Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Professionals – or professional wrongdoers?

By Kwazi Dlamini Characteristics of a profession: • The offering of a service to the public; • The possession of a special skill; • Having undergone specified training and education; • The possession of privilege or state recognition; • Membership to a self-disciplined group, with a “community of interest in theory and in fact among Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Clamping down on wayward auditors

Auditors and auditing firms have been in the news in recent months. We read about the likes of VBS Mutual Bank, Steinhoff and others, where auditors seemingly turned a blind eye to irregularities. Firms such as KPMG, which has been implicated in scandals involving the Gupta-owned Linkway Trading as well as the South African Revenue Read more >

PRESS RELEASES

CW demands transparency in promised Bain investigation

Corruption Watch has expressed disgust at the corrupt conduct of yet another large multinational corporation, Bain & Company, as recently revealed at the Nugent Commission of Inquiry into SARS. The commission revealed that the global management consultancy had, in undertaking a massively costly investigation at SARS, allowed itself to be used to further the corrupt Read more >