The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has swooped on Tembisa Hospital “syndicate kingpin” Stefan Govindraju – linked to more than 56 shell companies that raked in some R450m through dodgy tenders in two years – and hauled him to court on criminal tax charges.
He appeared in the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court last week charged with failure to submit tax returns for Fuligenix, a little-known business he controls.
Govindraju was first linked to the Tembisa Hospital scandal after the murder of Gauteng Health’s chief accountant Babita Deokaran in 2021, who had uncovered irregularities in the East Rand hospital’s procurement section three weeks before she was killed.
News24 reports that Govindraju’s web of extraction was wider than previously known, with another five letterbox entities found to be in simultaneous trade with the hospital and a further R16m in payments.
While Govindraju faces criminal prosecution, he remains a central figure in a three-year-long graft probe by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) and the Hawks, which examined thousands of individual transactions worth R2.3bn.
SARS would not disclose “confidential taxpayer information”, and repeated attempts to contact Govindraju were unsuccessful at the time of publication.
Gauteng Health Department expenditure ledgers, contained in a trove of 60 000 internal e-mails drawn from Deokaran’s laptop, suggest that the five shell companies provided Govindraju’s gateway to the public health sector.
Fuligenix, Vuliscore, Diolinx, and Zoolop Trading were established between 2015 and 2017 and were directed by Govindraju. In 2022, he took control of a fifth entity, Samdavid Trading, previously headed by his mother.
The firms honed in on Tembisa and other hospitals, with News24 identifying 48 individual payments to these companies, and the lion’s share borne by Tembisa Hospital.
Most of the tenders were worth just under R500 000, a crucial point in the method of operation that Deokaran was first to spot.
Fuligenix scored at least 11 contracts, with deals to supply various medical equipment and surgical implements.
Between June and August 2020, one year before Deokaran was killed, Fuligenix was awarded contracts to supply forceps to Tembisa Hospital.
The first saw the supply of 20 pairs of surgical scissors at a total cost of R194 400 – nearly R10 000 per pair. The second was for 30 sets of forceps at a total cost of R216 000. Each pair cost R7 200.
News24 sourced mirror products in the same quantity, for a fraction of the cost, indicating that the price of the first transaction was inflated by approximately 6 000% and the second by 1 500%.
Web widens
In a preliminary SIU report released in December 2022, Govindraju was named as a key “syndicate” leader, who had directed more than a quarter of the 217 suppliers Deokaran had red-flagged.
The SIU unearthed payments to companies under his control worth R436m.
His involvement became apparent when shell company directors – a network of his relatives, friends and others – abandoned the businesses, and within two days, resigned en masse, ceding control to him.
They had scored tens of millions of rands through their individual networks, enabled by either a dysfunctional or complicit procurement office at the hospital.
The fleet of suppliers provided everything from luxury leather furniture to
ventilators, at vastly inflated prices.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Tembisa Hospital tender tycoon landed R360m SAPS contract
Three companies score R100m contracts, latest Tembisa exposé shows
‘Corruption mafia’ claimed to be manipulating hospital tenders