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‘We found what we were looking for’: Hawks on North West raids

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The Hawks have swooped on several offices, including finance and legal, in the office of North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo in an early morning raid as more allegations of fraud and corruption emerge in the troubled province.

The Hawks have confirmed the raid was related to “fraud and corruption” cases.

While the province’s director-general, Dr Lydia Sebego, was on SABC news’s Morning Live programme explaining how they were busy investigating all allegations that had seen the North West making headlines recently, the Hawks were busy seizing documents on her floor at the Garona office complex in Mahikeng.

Walking from one office to the next, the officers were filling up transparent evidence bags with a variety of documents of files believed to be related to several tenders that are currently been questioned by the provincial legislature’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa).

Several departments, including health and public works, were placed under administration or co-management by about three years ago.

The reason was that they were not performing well and included allegations of maladministration and corruption.

These departments are currently co-managed with the provincial finance departments under the watchful eye of the premier’s office.

The health department is currently embroiled in a scandal of paying R30 million in advance to Mediosa, a Gupta-related company, to provide unsolicited service of a “high-tech” mobile clinic in a R180 million three-year contract.

Public works was last week questioned on another upfront payment of R103 million to a Mpumalanga-based company to fix flood-damaged roads across the province.

Mahumapelo’s own office was this week grilled by Scopa on several findings by the Auditor-General, including the “R131 994 216 of irregular expenditure incurred in the current financial year as a result of the contravention of supply chain management legislation” and irregular awarding of tenders.

The office was also asked on another controversial IT contract which was dubiously awarded to a company that has been raking in millions of rands every month.

It was believed that most of the documents seized today were related to the IT tender scandal.

Hawks spokesperson in the province, Captain Tlangelani Rikhotso, said they could not reveal exactly which cases they were after.

She confirmed, however, they were happy with the documents seized so far.

“We have been through different departments seizing documents and we found what we were looking for. It’s a very high profile case and we can’t reveal much ... there are investigations surrounding several departments in the province,” she said.

Asked if the Hawks was thinking they were having a tight case so far, Rikhotso said: “I think so...”.

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