AfriForum lays criminal charges against company with alleged EFF connections after Tshwane tender fraud
AfriForum laid criminal charges of tender fraud and corruption today at the Lyttelton police station against Hendrick Kganyago, Director of Balimi Barui Trading (BBT), and Stanley Kganyago, a family member of Hendrick Kganyago’s who was also a member of the bidding specification committee that had been established for the awarding of a fuel tender by the Tshwane Metro Council. This follows a ruling by the Northern Gauteng Court in Pretoria that the tender (awarded to BBT) was awarded irrationally.
The Tshwane Metro Council published the tender offer on 19 June 2018 for six fuel types that the Metro needed. The Metro has only been using two of these six fuel types since 2015, however. BBT attended the tender information session on 5 July 2018, and the very next day paid R250 000 into Mahuna Investment’s account. Mahuna Investments – of which John Phaleng, cousin of EFF leader Julius Malema, is the sole director – is also one of the companies that received illegal VBS money. There are allegations that this money was apparently used to finance Malema’s personal lifestyle, as well as to pay for his son’s school fees.
On 27 July 2018, Hendrick Kanyago paid a further R500 000 to Mahuna Investments, as well as R1 million to DMM Media and Entertainment. DMM Media and Entertainment’s only director is Wesley Dlamini, who, together with Brian and Lucky Shivambu (brothers of the EFF’s Deputy President Floyd Shivambu), owns various other companies.
The bidding specification committee awarded the tender to BBT in January 2019 despite the fact that BBT’s prices for the two fuel types – the only types that the Metro uses – were extraordinarily high. BBT set this off by offering the other four fuels (which aren’t used) at very low prices in its tender. It therefore seems that BBT very likely had access to information that the other tenderers were unaware of. Transcriptions of the bidding committee’s meetings show that Stanley Kganyago was very involved in discussions on the specifications of the fuel types in the tender bid, as well as being directly involved in the administration of the BBT contract.
“AfriForum will do everything in its power to prevent taxpayers from becoming victims of the suspect transaction orchestrated by the political elite. We are laying charges today because corruption and tender fraud are cancers that are spreading uncontrollably throughout the country – to everyone’s detriment,” says Monique Taute, Head of AfriForum’s Anti-corruption Unit.
