The identities of two Limpopo women, one a municipal worker and the other an unemployed security guard, were used in a scheme to wangle a lucrative Tembisa Hospital contract, reports News24, neither of whom knew anything about the tenders or even anyone involved in the bids.
Raesibe Motebejano cleans the Polokwane Municipality’s public swimming pools, but her signature also appears on bid documents for Black AK Trading and Suppliers, which tendered for a supplier contract from the hospital.
That contract, worth almost R500 000, was given to another company, called Magnolia Trading Enterprise, listing Portia Seleka as its sole director in its bid submission. Seleka is a security guard who, unable to find work, lives with her family in Sekakeng Village on the outskirts of Polokwane.
Neither of the two knows anything about the two companies – both linked to Tembisa tender don Hangwani Morgan Maumela, and his consiglieri, Vusi Matlala, whose companies seemingly used the stolen identities to bid against one another.
This payment is just one of more than 1 000 transactions flagged by Babita Deokaran, who discovered the first signs of a R1bn extraction syndicate and was assassinated three weeks after reporting her concerns.
Details around this contract to supply endoscopic surgical equipment are contained in 900 pages of bid forms, quotations and purchase orders filed in disciplinary action against Gauteng Health Department boss Lerato Madyo and Tembisa Hospital CEO Ashley Mthunzi.
Madyo and Mthunzi face dismissal for misconduct related to 13 contracts they approved. When it came to inking this deal for Maumela’s firm, forgeries and identity theft were among numerous irregularities overlooked.
Neither Motebejano and Seleka has ever been directors of the two companies, or any other entities, however, copies of their ID documents were used to obscure the actual owners of the competing firms: Maumela and Matlala.
The trove of documents provides new insight into how companies controlled by Maumela and Matlala bid against one another, in a form of “cover quoting”, where entities collude to make artificially inflated prices appear competitive.
Companies they control seemingly submitted fake and doctored bid documents to make it seem as if they had no links to the firms.
News24 found that documents filed in support of this bid list Portia Seleka as Magnolia Trading Enterprise’s lone director. A declaration form signed by “director” Khaya Mdlalose directly contradicts this.
An identity number for Mdlalose is invalid, and the CIPC database shows that the controlling hand behind Magnolia is Maumela.
Neither Seleka nor the mystery Mdlalose has ever been appointed as directors of this company.
Seleka was tracked down to a small dusty village, an hour outside Polokwane, where she said she knew nothing about the documents, and could not understand how a certified copy of ID was used to bid for a Tembisa Hospital contract hundreds of kilometres away.
The copy of her identity document was certified at the Botlokwa police station, close to her home, in 2012.
A similar method of operation was discovered in the losing bid, from a company owned by Matlala.
According to accompanying documents, the listed director is Raesibe Motebejano, however, the general worker who cleans public pools denied any knowledge of the company or Matlala and she had never had an interest in the firm, which was confirmed by the Companies and Intellectual Property database.
Her signature on the declaration documents, which shows her surname with a random flourish, was a bad forgery.
In a preliminary report filed in December, the SIU named Maumela as a central actor in syndicate activity within Tembisa Hospital’s supply chain management office.
For the Magnolia Trading Enterprise deal, the graft-busting squad recommended that Maumela be referred to the National Prosecuting Authority, as some bid documents were “false”.
Examining the documents associated with Matlala’s company, it seems the same referral could be made.
The disciplinary inquiry to decide the fate of Madyo and Mthunzi sat for the first time in February. A second sitting, chaired by advocate Phillip Mokoena SC, will take place later this year.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Tembisa Hospital tender prices were upped by 2 000%
R250m Tembisa Hospital syndicate still scoring tenders
Hawks raid ANC bigwig’s home, offices in Tembisa Hospital tender probe