PHILIP MOROBI and JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Sunday 5.00pm
MPUMALANGA has quietly reappointed its disgraced finance director, Shadrack Mashele, despite hounding him out of government last year for his role in a R51-million fraud scam.
Mashele allegedly helped his brother’s company, Senoko Enterprises, claim over R16-million from Mpumalanga’s education department for non-existent services. The scam was detected before government actually paid the money out, but not in time to stop the Northern Province government from paying R35-million to Senoko for non-existent or unwanted services.
Senoko closed down its offices and filed for bankruptcy shortly after the scam was uncovered, without refunding any of the money. Internal investigations and a disciplinary hearing found that Mashele irregularly wrote letters ordering schools to order chemicals and other services from Senoko.
He was also found guilty of irregularly transferring R273716 to Denys Reitz Attorneys in trust for Senoko Enterprises, of lying to the Corneliussen Commission into the matter and of misappropriating a government-issue VR6 Volkswagen Jetta. He was found guilty on all four misconduct charges and was fired from his post as provincial finance chief director in July 1998.
The dismissal should have signaled the end of Mashele’s government career but he was instead appointed as a chief director in the province’s public works department in Valencia, Nelspruit, on September 1. Mashele was in office last week but failed to return a string of telephone calls. His new departmental colleagues also refused to discuss the issue, while his acting head of department, Auwell Mashaba, and the province’s labour relations director, Rina Charles, both failed to return detailed messages on the reappointment.
Acting provincial director general, Hussein Varachia, was aware of the issue on Saturday but declined to comment until he verified the reasons for Mashele’s reappointment. — African Eye News Service