The Special Investigating Unit’s (SIU) capacity to investigate corruption is under threat from a severe cash crisis that has forced it to terminate the contracts of part-time staff, MPs heard on Friday.
SIU acting chief financial officer Garth Elliot said the SIU had to make do without roughly R175-million due to it from state entities, leaving only R307-million that was directly allocated from treasury for the financial year.
“Our budget consists of these two components. That part is being held back, so we do have serious cash flow problems,” he said after a briefing to Parliament’s portfolio committee on justice.
The funding shortfall came about after it was pointed out by Eskom last year that the unit’s founding statute did not expressly allow it to invoice state entities for the investigations it conducts.
“We sought legal opinion and in fact it was confirmed that we are not allowed to bill state institutions. We had been openly doing that for seven or eight years,” SIU investigations head Gerhard Visagie said.
“It was rather catastrophic for us. It cut 35% out of our budget.”
The unit had given notice to some 100 consultants who were working alongside the unit’s 600 permanent members.
“May 4 or 5 will be their last day. We hope that the issue can be addressed because … it is going to seriously affect our capacity.”
Legislative amendment
He said the unit urgently needed a legislative amendment to allow it to take remuneration from departments and hoped it would be in place by October.
The SIU’s budget was increased by 2.3% in 2012/13, amounting to a reduction in real terms, and MPs from across the political spectrum expressed shock that the SIU’s allocation was four times smaller than that of the public protector.
“I’m not comfortable with this. It is not the same role, these people are collecting money,” ANC parliamentarian John Jeffery said, referring to the misspent state funds the SIU recovered in the course of its work.
The workload of the unit has increased significantly after it received seven new proclamations in recent months, and three long-running investigations were extended.
Among these is a probe into procurement practices in the police force, which was pointing to irregular spending of up to R1.5-billion.
“There are definite indications of irregularity in this regard and this will probably produce significant results,” said Zola Ntolosi, the unit’s head of strategy.
Former SIU head Willie Hofmeyr, estimated last year that up to R30-billion in state funds was lost to corruption annually.
The unit said on Friday this estimate still held true. — Sapa