FS Legislature secretary under fire

The secretary of the Free State Legislature, Adv Joseph Machaka, is under fire. This as a report that recommended that the chief financial officer (CFO) of the provincial legislature, Quinton Hugo, be charged internally and criminally for contravening the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) is gathering dust.

Leaked documents show how on 28 September 2021, a precautionary suspension was issued by Machaka while acting as FSL secretary only to uplift it on 2 December 2021 after being appointed secretary permanently, without any hearing. This was much to the shock and disbelief of Free State Legislature staff.

Background 
The Free State legislature issued a bid for supply, delivery, and installation of a multimedia system on the 10th of October 2019 tender no: 09/2019 DCN Multimedia System. 
FSL awarded the tender to Digital Voice Processing (Pty) LTD (DVP), a company whose managing director, Peter Benson, allegedly drafted bid specifications for the legislature and this is supported by minutes of a gathering by the bid specifications committee (BSC) and the attendance register in possession of this publication.

While Benson, DVP managing director and Technical Advisor to the BSC drafted the specifications, he also gave an estimated budget of the threshold for the project which was stated in an email from his personal assistant Claudia Kisten on the 5th of August 2019. The amount was R3 174 794.00 though in their bid they quoted R 2 184 345.44 and they were awarded the tender.

The report shows it was Hugo who advised the BSC to contact Anton Roodt so he could give clarity that BSC sought and in a meeting held between BSC and Roodt on the 15th July 2019, Roodt indicated he was not available to provide technical advice, and he was going to reccomend someone else. 
That someone else was none other than Peter Benson.  

Email exchange show Hugo sent mail to Roodt on the 7th August 2019 with a subject “Bosch specs” at 09h54 AM while Benson sent mail to both Hugo and Roodt on the same day, 7th August 2019. 

Two months later a tender was advertised and Benson’s company was awarded.

A post facto report from the bid evaluation committee (BEC) convenor, Molelekwa Marumo and BEC member, Maroele Seruoe, directed to acting secretary Machaka on the 15th of December 2021 lifted the lid on a possible conflict of interest involving Quinton Hugo, FSL CFO, BSC Technical Advisor and DVP Managing Director, Peter Benson, and BEC member Anton Roodt.

They all have to declare conflict of interest which arose from the fact that the CFO recommended the awarding of the tender to the accounting officer when he was fully aware that the managing director of DVP was the Technical Advisor who helped draft specifications. 

In the letter Marumo and Seruoe said. 

“The evaluation performed by the BEC was conducted on the basis of the information and documents provided by the BSC at the time and the report clearly stipulated that members as appointed by the secretary declared that no declaring of interest existed that would compromised the credibility of the outcome in any way. 

The representative of the bidder that was ultimately awarded a contract, Digital Voice Processing, was involved in the formulation of the specification for the same bid. The correspondences from the BSC explicitly shows that it was the bidder who submitted the specifications to the BSC.” 

In conclusion they Marumo and Seruoe said. 

“The undersigned strongly believe that the involvement of the bidder in the BSC work (SCM system) gave rise to the conflict of interest.  A bidder had an interest to bid but got involved in the formulation of the bid specifications. Furthermore, the bidder failed to disclose its involvement in the BSC work that gave rise to the specification and evaluation criteria.”  

This prompted Joseph Machaka to commission MPM to investigate the possible conflict of interest and the report, emails and signed declaration form show indeed the awarding of the tender to DVP was irregular. 

The report dated 15 August 2021 found FSL CFO guilty of financial misconduct and recommended Adv Joseph Machaka should: 

Cancel the appointment of DVP (Pty) Ltd

Acounting officer should take effective and appropriate disciplinary measures against Quinton Hugo in his capacity as the CFO and member of BAC because he contravened or failed to comply with the provisions of section 10.1.1 of Supply Chain Regulations by failing to disclose his knowledge on the involvement of Peter Benson in the BSC as a technical advisor and assisted in the development of the bid specifications.  

The appointment of DVP (Pty) Ltd should be considered an irregular expenditure payment. Consider barring the service providers from participating in the future bidding processes of the Free State Legislature as they were dishonest in its participation in the Supply Chain Management system of Parliament in this tender and they failed to disclose information required by the accounting officer in terms of regulations which resulted in the compromise of the FSL Supply Chain System and resulted in irregular expenditure. 

Accounting Officer to act against Anton Roodt and Peter Benson, their companies, Roodt Architects and DVP  (Pty) Ltd for failure to disclose their interest. 

The accounting officer should consider opening a case of fraud to probe possible criminal intention as Quinton Hugo, Anton Roodt and Peter Benson and as representatives of their companies committed an act of fraud.

Machaka confirmed Hugo was suspended and he was satisfied with him coming back to work as his presence was not going to jeopardize the ongoing disciplinary process. 

With regards to opening a criminal case Machaka said. 

“Mr Hugo and Mr Roodt have taken the legal steps towards review of the report. The outcome of the legal process will determine the action to be taken by the Accounting Officer.” 

What was also of great concern from the report is the fact that FSL does not have a Supply Chain Policy and Advocate Machaka conceded. 

“Yes, its true and the legislature took serious note of the finding. However, the Free State Legislature applies the Supply Chain Management regulations in the absence of a policy.” 

The matter has also been reported to the Auditor General and we shall reach out to AGSA in coming weeks. 

This is a developing story.

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