President Cyril Ramaphosa has confirmed that the process of conducting lifestyle audits on members of his Cabinet will be finalised by the end of the current financial year.
He said since the process to conduct lifestyle audits on Ministers was not legislated, they had to consider various mechanisms on how this would be done.
One of the options was to use internal resources of the State and then bring in external experts to help with other aspects of it, including data analysis.
They have decided that they will use the State Security Agency or the Special Investigating Unit, and their work will be beefed up by external service providers.
Ramaphosa was replying to a written parliamentary question by Democratic Party (DA) leader John Steenhuisen on this process, following his promise in 2018.
Ramaphosa said since the process of conducting lifestyle audits was not legislated, they have to get consent from Ministers.
He said the Director-General in the Presidency was working on this matter.
“The Office of the Director General considered two options for conducting lifestyle audits on members of the executives. The first option was to use the internal capacity within government with the support of external expertise on certain aspects such as data analysis.
“Bodies such as the State Security Agency (SSA) or the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) could be considered to conduct the lifestyle audit. The second option was to fully outsource to an external audit firm or consortium of experts and closely project manage the rollout of the audit. The Presidency is using both options, the pre-investigation phase which is the first phase of the lifestyle audit will be conducted by an external service provider. As previously stated in the oral reply, it is anticipated that this project will be concluded by the end of this financial year,” said Ramaphosa.
The issue of lifestyle audits has been raised in the past by members of the opposition after Ramaphosa announced it.
However, the president came under fire for failing to implement it five years after he made the announcement in his State of the Nation Address.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
Politics