Suspended Treasury official urged to go court

The suspension of Pakiso Lebone, a Treasury official suspended over payment for Macufe has taken a new twist following the discovery that the payment was not paid in advance and therefore his suspension is unlawful.

Lebone was suspended immediately after Macufe for the role he allegedly played in an over payment to Consumer Connectedness (C-2) as Treasury initiated investigations but questions were raised as to why.

Step UP SA News has discovered that the submission for advance payment from Sport, Art, Culture, and Recreation was not approved by Treasury therefore he could not have made an advance payment.

It’s not clear how far the investigation is but according to a source with intimate knowledge the payment was made to the third party for work done.

“To be fair to Pakiso he did nothing wrong, C-2 submitted invoices of the job already done such as the booking of artists and others, etc.

This is how government works, you invoice after doing the job and this is the case here.”

However, he remains suspended and labour law experts urged Lebone to take Treasury to court.

“This is a clear abuse of power, he must go to court and the court will reinstate him even if he made advance payment as long as it was approved he would not have done anything wrong.

His suspension was prematurely and based on the noise around Macufe.”

As things stand Me Sefora Ntombela, The Free State Province Premier has not yet responded to the court judgment including if she will recover the money or appeal as the MEC is cited therefore can not be handling this.

There are also unconfirmed reports of R3 million that moved from point A to point B in cash but we are still connecting the dots.

It’s conference season every cent counts.

Lebone didn’t respond despite reading our texts and Treasury couldn’t be reached.

This is a developing story.

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