Auditors have uncovered a string of financial irregularities in key departments in the Western Cape provincial administration, the Desai Commission heard on Monday.
The irregularities include the purchase of a Watchdog, a sophisticated device which can be used to both detect electronic bugging and to monitor conversations.
The commission, which began its public hearings on Monday, was appointed by premier Peter Marais to probe the discovery of the device amid fears that it had been used by the previous administration to spy on political opponents.
Marais gave the former director general, Dr Niel Barnard, his marching orders soon after his New National Party-African National Congress coalition ousted the Democratic Alliance in December last year.
Director of forensic audit in the provincial administration, Renay Ogle, told the commission that though the provincial cabinet in August last year approved a proposal for heightened security, this did not mention the purchase of the R27 695 Watchdog.
The device had not been budgeted for, no comparative quotes had been obtained, and there was no proper documentation on the need for it.
She was unable to say from the documentation who in political authority had been aware of the purchase of the device.
”We have not established political involvement in terms of documents in regard to the procurement of the Watchdog,” she said.
Ogle said the DG’s office had operated an irregular private bank account for an entertainment fund, which meant that the R96 659 that passed through it could not be audited.
One withdrawal for R3 000 could not be accounted for, while receipts for some purchases made with money from the fund appeared to have been tampered with.
With one of these tampered receipts, claimed as a food expense, it emerged that the money in fact went on a bicycle combination lock and a pair of girl’s school shoes.
Nor had there been treasury approval for an operation to sell ”corporate image” items, including t-shirts, pens and umbrellas, from the office of the DG.
Although R12 000 was budgeted for the operation in 2000/1, actual stock purchases were over R220 000. The budget for the following year was R14 000, and actual purchases R302 508.
Ogle said her team last week discovered boxes full of official documents in the office of a messenger in the DG’s office.
Among the documents, which were supposed to be kept in the DG’s registry, were financial records the auditors had been searching for.
Earlier the head of the National Intelligence Agency in the Western Cape, Arthur Fraser, told the commission that the Watchdog was found in the possession of Pierre Beneke, a senior official in the DG’s office, in March this year after an NIA sweep of the provincial legislature and administration offices.
An NIA technical expert said that with the right aerial connection, the device was capable of monitoring conversations up to 4km away.
A police captain also told the commission how he found two men with electronic equipment in the office of former premier Gerald Morkel late one night last year.
Captain Renier Strydom, of police protection services, said one of them was sitting in the premier’s chair, with a cable attached to the receiver of the premier’s phone, and the other was on one side with a large black box with ”a whole lot of buttons”, and electronic equipment attached to it.
The men, a Mr Niehamer and a Mr Lorenzo Lombard, said they were from a private security company and were sweeping the office for electronic bugs.
Strydom said that when he confronted them, the men contacted Louis Steyn, a consultant to Barnard, who told him that because Morkel was ”high profile”, the sweeping was being done so that few people would know about it. – Sapa