Lottery bosses turned to State Security Agency to investigate leaks

Lottery bosses turned to State Security Agency to investigate leaks

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Former Countrywide Lotteries Fee (NLC) board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda requested the Condition Safety Agency (SSA) in December 2018 to investigate the leaking of files that uncovered lottery corruption.
The NLC’s enterprise secretary at enough time shown media reviews she said were being according to “stolen” information and facts in an affidavit with the SSA.
The SSA did examine. It observed the knowledge wasn't a subject of condition stability and which the “prevalence of alleged corruption and irregularities” gave “enough motive” with the media to show it.
A completely new board and administration has considering that taken over the NLC and To this point have taken steps to finish corruption in the institution.
A Condition Safety Company (SSA) investigation observed the “prevalence” of alleged corruption and irregularities involving the NLC and its beneficiaries “supplied enough motive” for exposure with the media.

The probe into meant “details safety breaches and sabotage of NLC operations” was carried out just after then-NLC board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda wrote for the SSA in December 2018 requesting it to investigate.

Here's

Nevhutanda’s letter,
an affidavit by at present suspended NLC business secretary Nompumelelo Nene supporting the ask for, and
the safety company’s “confidential” conclusions and proposals.
Nevhutanda requested the SSA to investigate the job of NLC staff inside the alleged leaking of information, and Nene, in her affidavit determined certain media and experiences that she claimed associated these leaks.

From the letter outlining its conclusions, the SSA explained to the NLC that while shielding state info was “a legal crucial geared toward safeguarding the sovereignty and integrity on the point out” this only placed on properly classified facts.

Even though it did not say so instantly, the SSA conclusions implied which the allegedly leaked facts did not slide into this group.

Significantly, the SSA produced it clear that the need to protect condition information “will not avert any personal from blowing the whistle on corruption or irregular or illegal activity”.

The SSA investigation uncovered that the NLC information and facts associated with the alleged breach was “delicate and privileged in mother nature, but not categorised regarding the prescripts in the Minimum Information and facts Stability Specifications (Skip)”.

“The leakage on the applicable delicate Formal NLC data to your media would not pose a danger to national stability,” the SSA explained, including which the impression on the breaches was reputational.

The SSA report identified “no proof of the factual and incriminating nature towards any in the suspected NLC staff members that could be recognized from the knowledge and facts interrogated”.

It also mentioned that “the prevalence of alleged corruption and irregularities throughout the NLC and at its beneficiaries does provide ample motive to have this kind of exposed from the media”.

Conspiracy statements
In 2020, Nevhutanda told MPs all through a session of Parliament’s trade, field and Levels of competition portfolio committee that there was “a conspiracy” through which information “stolen” through the NLC was despatched towards the US, where by he claimed it had been remaining offered to fund a smear marketing campaign in opposition to the NLC.

He was repeating comparable statements he had Beforehand created in Parliament, which incorporated advert hominem assaults on GroundUp and this reporter but was mindful not to name both.

“I came listed here During this August home final yr and noted to honourable associates that information regarding our beneficiaries has long been stolen and place in one point out in the usa,” he explained to MPs.

“We identified as to the State Stability Agency to return investigate the make a difference because we're having studies that our data is generating funds for media platforms and journalists,” he claimed. “There was talk, certainly from one particular resource, 1 media, that spoke Considerably about proactive-funding,” Nevhutanda said (referring to GroundUp), but failed to notify MPs which the SSA investigation had been accomplished Practically a 12 months previously.

Proactive funding was at the heart from the looting of the lottery. It aspect-stepped the conventional grant procedure. The NLC could alone identify a venture to fund and appoint a non-profit organisation to oversee it.

Following Nevhutanda 1st informed Parliament in 2018 that he had asked the SSA to research the supposed breach, the South African Countrywide Editors Discussion board issued a press release indicating that his remarks mirrored “an extremely unsafe Mind-set in which the media is being blamed for the NLC’s inherent difficulties”.

“As an alternative to investigating why tens of millions cannot be accounted for, the NLC has rather made an effort to cast doubt about the integrity on the journalists involved and has requested the SSA to analyze their resources.”

Proactive jobs manufactured magic formula
Safety flaws determined in the NLC grant funding process in the SSA’s investigation, surface to happen to be applied being an excuse from the NLC to get rid of all proactive-funded assignments from its central grants technique.

“In or about 21 December 2019, the classification of all pro-actively funding projects was heightened to ‘magic formula’ and jobs were being removed from the grant funding program and managed manually under the custody of [Tsietsi Maselwa] the NLC’s [then] Deputy Info Office, Government Supervisor Authorized as a way to safeguard [the] information and facts,” Nene explained in her affidavit.

“There was lots of internal dialogue, with many back and forth, about how to proceed to plug the alleged leaks”, a resource, who was in a very senior placement on the NLC at the time, told GroundUp. “Ultimately, the decision was taken to get rid of many of the proactive tasks through the technique and limit entry to a handful of men and women”.

Some in that handful of men and women were being implicated in corruption.

Maselwa, who resigned from the NLC several decades back, has long been implicated in corruption involving lottery resources. He gained R4.3-million from lottery resources allocated to build a library and museum elaborate in Kuruman (see Taung Cultural Songs and Arts Expo) which he made use of to develop a house in an upmarket gated progress in Pretoria. The home is one of quite a few paid for with lottery money that were frozen following the Asset Forfeiture Device received a preservation buy in December 2022.

The politically-related Nevhutanda, who was appointed given that the NLC board chairperson by former President Jacob Zuma in 2009 and was near to significant-ups in the ANC leadership, previous NLC former Commissioner Thabang Mampane, and ex-chief functioning officer Phillemon Letwaba, have all been implicated during the corruption which confused the NLC on their view.

Also implicated are former board associates William Huma, who resigned just after he was confronted with proof of how he had profited from corrupt lottery grants, and Muthuhadini Madzivhandila, who has due to the fact died.

Every time a new administration, such as the total board and executive, took more than at the NLC in late 2022 and early 2023, they found out a “chaotic mess” during the documentation associated with proactive funding, Significantly of which was paper-dependent. Key documents had been missing. Information held for safekeeping by document storage firm Metrofile were signed out and hardly ever returned.

The NLC was capable of Get better copies of some หวย รัฐบาล files from its Mimecast email archiving process and the laptops of their assistants and help team.

Information studies
In his one December 2018 letter, resolved to then SSA Minister Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, Nevhutanda wrote: “The NLC has pointed out with grave issue feasible info security breaches as well as unauthorised use and/or dissemination of private details obtained on account of doing official capabilities inside the Fee by NLC staff. The activities are intended to undermine the integrity of the Commission when disrupting the successful capabilities [of the NLC] and triggering insurmountable reputational hurt to the Commission because the custodian of non-public facts entrusted to it by its beneficiaries.”

His ask for for that SSA to analyze was supported within an affidavit by suspended NLC firm secretary, Nomphumelelo Nene.

Nene is at this time struggling with a disciplinary inquiry just after she was unsuccessful in authorized action to put aside results of irregular expenditure on her observe.

The purpose of her affidavit, Nene said, was “to history the functions which transpired associated with details stability breaches on the Countrywide Lotteries Commission”.

She stated a variety of information reviews which she claimed ended up the outcomes of those “breaches” (see at the conclusion of this informative article).

Nene claimed that a whistle-blower approached the NLC alleging that certainly one of its personnel, Sello Qhino, had “furnished her categorised NLC Information and facts and persistently inspired her to deliver the data to GroundUp”.

Qhino, who blew the whistle over a series of dodgy lottery-funded tasks in Kuruman soon after makes an attempt to raise the issue internally had been ignored, was subsequently fired.

Referring to an eighteen November 2018 article in the Day by day Dispatch with regard to the misappropriation of Lottery cash, Nene said the NLC discovered and afterwards suspended Zintle Rungqu. She was an personnel inside the NLC’s East London Business, who was the husband or wife along with the mother of whistleblower Mzukise Makatse’s three young children.

Rungqu and Makatse feel Rungqu was punished since Makatse blew the whistle. She was suspended and billed internally, With all the NLC expending R470,000 on lawyers to stand for it, but was located not responsible and permitted to return to operate.

“The common Consider these posts is [they contain] labeled data regarding proactive funding assignments,” Nene mentioned in her affidavit.

When Runqu was suspended, Makatse moved out on the household house to go ahead and take heat off her and his kids. Facing homelessness, he moved into an Business office in an vacant manufacturing facility belonging to a buddy.

Both equally Makatse and Qhino are taking part in an NLC reparation course of action intended to recognise the damage some individuals suffered in the hands with the NLC. Apologies and, occasionally, fiscal compensation are predicted.

“Some people today have been genuinely influenced very negatively by this … This is basically painful,” NLC Commissioner Jodi Scholtz informed the Day by day Maverick previous 12 months.

“I fulfilled several these persons. It was just so coronary heart-wrenching that their total lives have been turned the other way up,” claimed Scholtz.

Amid Individuals she achieved had been Qhino and Makatse.

Harmless platform wanted for whistleblowers
The SSA identified the absence at some time of an appropriate channel for whistleblowers to report corruption led them to turn towards the media.

“Failure to have a committed anti-corruption channel will end in employees presenting this sort of scenarios outside of the NLC,” the SSA stated in its findings.

“Offered the magnitude of corruption in state establishments, it continues to be critical that it makes sure that the NLC complies with all safety prescripts Which its concentration is on guaranteeing that illegal and irregular perform is adequately mitigated from and by ensuring an enough channel for whistle-blowers to report untoward conduct with no remaining intimidated.”

It advised the NLC create a “Harmless channel” for workers to deliver info on any “untoward exercise” that would not stop or discourage workers from blowing the whistle. A whistle-blowers policy, according to the Protected Disclosures Act twenty five of 2000, is a need.”

Media stories Nene detailed
A 10 December 2017 report during the Limpopo Mirror about corruption and maladministration involving the Lottery-funded Vhembe Wellbeing and Health Centre in Limpopo. GroundUp has labored carefully with Anton van Zyl, an investigative reporter and operator in the Limpopo Mirror, to show NLC corruption. “The post experienced elements of information not out there in the general public domain, thereby increasing worry on interior Info safety breaches. The allegations while in the media were being independently investigated,” Nene said. “Nevertheless, staff chargeable for divulging categorised information and facts have still being determined”;
A 28 January 2018 report printed from the Dally Dispatch “citing various allegations with the Limpopo Mirror write-up published on 10 December 2017 and a new allegation regarding a former worker via the name of Mzukisi Makatse. He was charged and summarily dismissed with the threat induced to the organisation.”
A 16 November 2018 write-up from the Lowvelder regarding the misappropriation of NLC money involving a lottery-funded drug rehabilitation centre. GroundUp has documented how, Regardless of obtaining R27-million in lottery grants, the rehab has not been accomplished. “The Lowvelder report contained categorized details regarding NLC policy, boosting further more problems of inner info stability breaches,” Nene explained in her affidavit. “The prima facie proof regarding these allegations didn't warrant an independent Investigation, having said that [it] highlighted the heightened data stability hazards throughout the NLC.”
A 22 November 2018 GroundUp expose about a dodgy R27.5-million grant to Denzhe Principal Treatment, a hijacked NPO. Nene said GroundUp had confirmed in its story that it had been based upon leaked NLC files. This was Regardless of the NLC rejecting a PAIA (Advertising of Usage of Information) request for details in regards to the task, she explained

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