MPs owe Parliament at least R8-million, according to figures relating to the Travelgate scandal and expunged from the legislature’s annual report.
Detailed information about the abuse of travel vouchers was deleted from the document in an apparent attempt to limit the dissemination of figures that suggest more could be done to pursue claims against MPs and travel agents.
A total of 24 MPs will stand trial in the Cape High Court on July 31 for their roles in the affair; five have agreed to plea bargains.
The original report of the accounting officer was signed by the secretary to Parliament, Zingile Dingani, and submitted to the office of the auditor general on May 31 last year, along with the 2004/05 annual financial statements.
Paragraph three of that report, of which the Mail & Guardian has a copy, runs over six pages, with a detailed breakdown of the claims against each travel agent so far, and an analysis that suggests that much more could be claimed if more transactions were investigated.
In paragraph three of the published report, only the first six lines of that information survive.
All the published report has to say on the numbers is: ”The forensic audit conducted in conjunction with Transnet Group Internal Audit Services indicates that the loss suffered by Parliament through the fraudulent use of member’s Travel Warrants by five travel agents for the period reviewed amounted to R17,2-million for the period tested.”
That is a dramatic change from what Dingani approved. For example, the original contained a table detailing potential claims against Bathong Travel showing that investigators looked at an R35,5-million sample of transactions, but Parliament had done R51,4-million of business with the company between July 1998 and July 2003.
The various tables made it a matter of straightforward arithmetic to calculate that even on the limited figures available, MPs were personally implicated in about R8-million of fraud, but the five who have concluded plea bargain agreements so far were responsible for just more than R400 000.
The table for Star Travel, for example, says current members of parliament owe R3,8-million, current and former MPs who use Ilitha Travel owe R1,4-million. ITC Travel clients owe R2,6-million. The report does not include figures for Bathong Travel, where 225 MPs were clients, because the investigation into Bathong was at a very early stage when the report was compiled.
Nor does it include potential claims for fraudulent mileage claims submitted to Parliament by MPs in respect of rental cars that they were not paying for.
Dingani did not respond to questions sent to his office about why the report had been changed. The office of the auditor general in the Western Cape, which handles Parliament’s accounts, was preparing a response as the M&G went to press.
The published report does contain other awkward information, however.
- Parliament underspent its R832-million budget by R138-million last year. A significant proportion of that is attributable to the fact that less money went to members’ services — notably travel — in 2004/05.
- But about R79-million — 20% of the budget — in underspending is recorded for administration. Much of that, according to parliamentary sources, as a result of the institution’s inability to fill posts created in the drive to improve the efficiency of the parliamentary service.
- The R1-billion 2005/6 budget is likely to be underspent by about R2000-million, people familiar with the progress of spending suggest.