Fraud case against former Chief Justice office employee and girlfriend postponed
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A former employee at the office of the Chief Justice together with his girlfriend have been released bail following their arrest by the police.
Phindi Mjonondwana from the NPA said that Sipho Matshika and Masabata Shuoing aged 52 and 45 years old, respectively, are facing three counts of fraud for allegedly defrauding the office of Chief Justice through a business they both owned and were directors of from 2007, Knowledge Net Consulting (Pty) LTD.
“Shuping was also the sole director of Pursuit Knowledge Consulting (PKC) (Pty) Ltd. Matshika was employed by the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) division. His duties involved the drafting of bid specifications for ICT contracts at the OCJ. He was also responsible for recommending the preferred bidder to the Bid Adjudication Committee (BAC).”
Mjonondwana said that Matshika was given an important to the Bid Specification Committee (BSC) and Bid Evaluation Committee (BEC) for various contracts, because of his expertise. Both these committees play a very important role in that they make recommendations to the (BAC) on the preferred bidder to be appointed.
Both these companies linked to the duo, were awarded contracts which saw them benefiting millions of Rands.
The OCJ paid PKC R48 million for a range of contracts that have now been placed on hold pending further investigation and a judicial review. These include R2.7 million and R24 million in cybersecurity contracts awarded to PKC in 2020.
However, both suspects failed to disclose any conflict of interest and/or knowing each other in anyway.
Shuping had a legal obligation equally so with Matshika, in terms of the SBDM form 4 to declare her conflict of interest, if she knew any person employed by the government, who might be involved in the evaluation of her bid. Instead she denied having any relations with anyone employed by the government in the evaluation of her contract.
PKC was appointed to provide Anti-virus solutions after the OCJ experienced a Malware virus attack.
The matter was postponed to 26 September 2023, for disclosure of the contents of the docket.
