Government officials who bought Soccer World Cup tickets using the state purse could face fines or imprisonment, depending on the outcome of a meeting between the Treasury, the chairperson of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) and the Auditor General.
This is in line with provisions of the Public Finance Management Act and the Municipal Finance Management Act, which govern how the state spends taxpayers’ money.
Directors general at national government level and municipal managers could take the heat for the millions spent on tickets for the soccer spectacle. The Acts state that an accounting officer found to have allowed fruitless or wasteful expenditure is liable for a fine or a term of imprisonment of up to five years.
The meeting between Pravin Gordhan, the Finance Minister, Terence Nombembe, the Auditor General, and Themba Godi, the chairperson of parliamentary watchdog Scopa, is a clear indication of how seriously Gordhan is taking the matter, Jabulani Sikhakhane, the Treasury spokesperson, said this week. It could not be established when the meeting will take place.
The Democratic Alliance has criticised the spending on World Cup tickets, which it says exceeded R130-million.
But department officials and officers in local authorities hardly seem to be running scared, despite the Treasury having told local and provincial governments not to spend money on World Cup tickets or jerseys. In circulars it said it would regard such expenditure as “irregular, as well as fruitless and wasteful”. Anyone who gave instructions for such spending would be held liable for it and could be charged with financial misconduct.
A senior member of government, whose department has been targeted and who asked not to be named, argued that, while it was good policy to scrutinise such expenditure, in a number of cases it was justifiable.
“Many state-owned entities and development finance institutions operate in the open market and need to build relationships with clients and stakeholders,” the official said. “They need to raise money on capital markets and this is a way of building relationships.”
He noted that private companies also spent large sums of money on the event to court clients.
But it is unclear how buying tickets for state officials, particularly in state monopolies such as Eskom, falls into this category. Another government source said that buyers of tickets to rugby and cricket games were also in the firing line. The Mail & Guardian recently reported that the parastatal had spent R12-million on tickets for senior executives.