South African Auditor-General refuses to probe irregular lottery grants amid corruption claims

The Auditor-General office in South Africa has turned down a formal request to investigate irregular lottery grant payments given to a Cape Town minstrel organisation, as reported by Ground Up.
Image: Shutterstock

The Auditor-General office in South Africa has turned down a formal request to investigate irregular lottery grant payments given to a Cape Town minstrel organisation, as reported by Ground Up.

A former MP in South Africa claims that ‘tens of millions’ of rand has been paid to the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival organisation, with estimates that R63.5m could have been paid by the National Lottery Commission.

The NLC has faced ongoing criticism from figures in South Africa who believe that fraud and corruption are taking place.

The commission says it has had full clean audits since 2015/16, but the Ground Up report says that it did not receive a full clean audit in 2017/18.

Michael Waters wrote to the Auditor-General in January requesting a forensic audit of all NLC grants to the CTMCA. At the time, Waters was serving as a Member of Parliament for the opposition Democratic Alliance party. 

He wrote, courtesy of Ground Up: “As you can deduce from the ambiguous replies, the NLC has little knowledge as to whether the vast amount of money given to the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association was indeed utilised on what it was intended to be utilised for. 

“I am concerned that there has been abuse in the spending of the grants and thus formally request your office to conduct a forensic audit of all grants issued to the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association by the NLC.”

Despite this, the business unit leader at Auditor-General replied recently that the organisation would not be investigating, citing that there are already three investigations ongoing.

An Auditor-General statement said that one of the investigations pertained to: “allegations of fraud and corruption pertaining to grant funding involving the suspended COO, Board members, employees and links to beneficiaries.”