Last week marked three years since the assassination of Babita Deokaran, the former chief director for financial accounting at the Gauteng Department of Health, who flagged more than 850 dodgy transactions at Tembisa Hospital.
Deokaran, who died in a hail of bullets on August 23, 2021, was remembered during a memorial service held in her memory on Friday where Special Investigations Unit (SIU) spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago revealed that the SIU has uncovered the unlawful movement of money amounting to R3 billion at the hospital, east of Johannesburg.
Kganyago said even though six men had been sentenced for her murder, the current investigation was complex as the SIU was investigating at least 850 transactions linked to dodgy deals.
“The investigation is very complicated, and what I can say to the public is that we have reached a stage where we can safely say we have never seen such kind of problems and ways of trying to hide things. You’ll remember, at the time when Babita died she had flagged about 850 transactions.
“So far, we have flagged 5 500 and they are very intricate; they are what we call letter box transactions that are done through different bank accounts. Therefore it is an indication that we still have a lot of work that we need to do,” Kganyago said.
On the more than R3bn theft of public funds, Kganyago said the SIU was doing its best to bring those responsible to book.
“So far we’ve established that there’s about R3bn that moved from the department to these bogus accounts and therefore we are still continuing with the investigations and we are hoping that this is going to show more results. We have promised that in her name we will do everything that we need to do to get to the bottom of it,” he said.
On Friday, the DA, through its Gauteng shadow health MEC Jack Bloom, said the corruption at the hospital involved much more than the R850m Deokaran had flagged three weeks before her death.
Bloom accused the health department of dragging its feet in ensuring accountability, with inexcusable delays in the disciplinary inquiry into chief financial officer Lerato Madyo, who has been suspended on full pay for two years.
“My view is that the cover-up continues at the department. If there was another Babita who tried to stop corruption, she would be silenced as well. The lack of concern about corruption is shown by the recent appointment of Mr Arnold Malotana as head of department despite a SIU investigation into a tender-rigging scheme where he allegedly shared a R8m bribe with two other officials,” Bloom said.
The Star
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