Hawks failed to follow the money in Prasa-Siyangena tender, says whistle-blower

Martha Ngoye, a suspended Passenger Rail Agency of SA Agency (Prasa) executive, said the Hawks would have been able to probe who received cash allegedly paid to Prasa executives after the awarding of a multi-billion-rand tender to Siyangena 11 years ago.

Ngoye was addressing a media briefing on Thursday on the eve of an appeal by Siyangena, which will be heard by full bench of the Supreme Court of Appeal on Friday.

Siyangena is appealing against a judgment by the high court in Pretoria in October 2020, which set aside contracts signed between Prasa and Siyangena — during 2011 and July 2014 — for work done at Prasa train stations, including automated access gates and camera installations worth billions.

Lucky Montana was CEO of Prasa when these contracts were awarded.

The high court had also ordered that an engineer be appointed to evaluate the work performed by Siyangena and file a report with the court.

If the work done by Siyangena was valued more than the money it was paid, the court ordered that Prasa pay the excess of the value determined by the engineer.

However, the court said if the value of the work completed by Siyangena was less than the engineer’s valuation, Siyangena must pay Prasa the excess. 

Ngoye said the initial award of a contract in 2009 was for two stations and a tender process was followed.

“Immediately after that, there was an extension to seven stations. There was no tender process at all at Prasa in relation to the seven stations.”

Ngoye said Siyangena was initially subcontracted to undertake the work on the first two stations and thereafter was awarded as contractor when the contract was extended. 

“It was suggested that requests for proposals were issued, only to find there was none,” Ngoye said. “When it came to phase 2 of the tender, there was a tender process that was initiated. We had instances where there were irregularities within the tender processes. It just showed how much of the process and laws were broken as a result of this tender process,” Ngoye said.

Ngoye said as the group head of legal at Prasa, she and her team had to right the wrongs at Prasa.

She said investigations revealed there were payments made to some executives after the awarding of contracts.

“What Prasa sought to do at the time was to have the Hawks follow the money. It would have been very easy  to follow the money and say what happened in relation to this particular transaction. 

“To date it has not happened. Even if the Hawks, in my view, were to start and continue this investigation, you will find the money is gone by now. We know the parties that were involved.”

Ngoye said it is alleged as part of investigations that a company belonging to politically connected businessman Roy Moodley had received R500m arising from the contract.

“What became interesting for me because of the political nature of this particular transaction, when I went to my superiors after the departure of (Prasa board chair) Popo Molefe to say ‘please sign the affidavit that is going to assist us as Prasa to review this particular contract because of the unlawfulness and corruption that is evident’, the CEOs that were at the time acting did not want to touch it,” Ngoye said.

Ngoye said she deposed to an affidavit in the review and also tendered evidence at the state capture commission on that particular affidavit.

“I did not realise that by so doing, I was labelling myself as state enemy number one in relation to that because the negativity and the confrontation that I had received, also from some of my colleagues, was telling.”

Ngoye said after these investigations, Prasa decided to do a self-review of the tender and declare the contract invalid.

However, Ngoye said because of the appeal, it means the judgment of the high court was stayed, and the engineer could not perform the task ordered by the court.

Zackie Achmat, of civil society coalition #UniteBehind, said they decided to get involved as friend of the court after it heard that the Prasa board had met Siyangena and decided to reach a settlement with Siyangena to pay it R2.6bn.

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