Health boss's case takes break
2005-03-10 23:16
Nelspruit - The fraud-and-corruption trial of Mpumalanga former deputy director-general Riena Charles and her business tycoon brother-in-law Percy Siboza sat in Nelspruit for the first time on Thursday.
The case was transferred from Pretoria commercial court to Nelspruit as the two have had to travel to Pretoria for each appearance since their arrests at the beginning of last year.
A relaxed-looking Charles and Siboza were not asked to plead when they appeared in Nelspruit regional court and the trial was set for July 5.
Charles is accused of deliberately subverting financial controls while serving as provincial health chief to enrich Siboza and benefit other close associates, including a boyfriend.
Mpumalanga's initial attempts to press misconduct charges against Charles were hindered by the pending criminal trial.
Promoted 'sideways'
This resulted in the outspoken administrator being transferred "sideways" and promoted to the second most-powerful post in Mpumalanga's bureaucracy.
Charles was arrested on two criminal fraud charges and two alleged criminal transgressions of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).
Siboza was arrested on multiple fraud, tax-evasion and corruption charges after allegedly irregularly benefiting from irregular health tenders totalling almost R50m.
The key charges against Charles include her alleged illegal approval of two major R3.6m contracts to buy electrical generators from Siboza.
The generators were allegedly supplied to hospitals which did not need them and, in some cases, were never delivered at all.
The PFMA charges, relating to alleged mismanagement and dereliction of duty, are the first recorded criminal prosecution of a South African government official for allegedly failing to do their duty.
200 pages of evidence
The criminal abuses were first exposed by the media and later confirmed in two independent forensic reports.
These comprised 200 pages of evidence indicating that Charles apparently routinely tampered with tenders that ultimately benefited companies linked to Siboza.
Auditors also found prima facie evidence that at least one R30m equipment order for provincial hospitals was deliberately and artificially "padded", resulting in fruitless expenditure of R13.7m.