Publications
Partners
Cape Town – National Treasury hasn’t received any dossier or relevant information pertaining to the allegations against chief procurement officer Kenneth Brown, who has been with the department for almost 20 years.
Deputy director general Ismail Momoniat was responding to a question during a parliamentary briefing in which National Treasury was giving feedback on its annual report to the Standing Committee on Finance.
Committee chairperson Yunus Carrim of the ANC asked Treasury officials to clarify allegations that surfaced against Brown, which claimed he had received payments of more than R1m – at times in amounts of R200 000 at a time.
Mzwanele Manyi, who heads up the Progressive Professionals Forum, made the allegations but is yet to hand over the dossier or any other relevant information concerning National Treasury, said Momoniat.
Manyi said during an SABC interview that he had forwarded the dossier to the Hawks for investigation.
"If you have an officer of government that is involved with a procurement function and you hear all kinds of monies are going into his account that exceed a million - and he is supposed to be a salaried person - the question is where do these deposits come from?" asked Manyi.
Read: Treasury to probe chief procurement officer claims
Floyd Shivambu, member of the committee and an Economic Freedom Fighters MP, said the allegations against Brown seem to be part of the “systematic attack on National Treasury – led by the Gupta-affiliated corps of which Manyi is a part”.
“There are so many things that have consistently happened. The ANC must deal with this. Don’t read it narrowly,” he said to the ANC’s Carrim. “This is capturing by a small fraction of corrupt individuals.”
It was widely reported in the media that when members of the Gupta family offered Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas the position of finance minister some of their demands included getting rid of Treasury officials, including Brown, who was opposed to a proposed R1trn nuclear deal.
Carrim said the allegations against Brown were very serious and needed to be followed up.
Treasury director general Lungisa Fuzile also weighed in, saying it was worrying that Brown’s private financial statements could end up in another individual’s hands.
“That means someone has access to such information. In this case, we do not have the information, whether obtained legally or otherwise. The expectation that we would act in ways that suggest we believe there to be a case against the chief procurement officer is totally misplaced,” Lungisa said.
Brown and his team have been probing tenders above R10m across departments in their quest to ensure government gets value for money, reduces wastage and clamps down on procurement irregularities.
Read Fin24's top stories trending on Twitter:
