Lottery bosses turned to State Security Agency to research leaks

Lottery bosses turned to State Security Agency to research leaks

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Previous National Lotteries Fee (NLC) board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda questioned the Condition Security Agency (SSA) in December 2018 to analyze the leaking of documents that exposed lottery corruption.
The NLC’s enterprise secretary at some time detailed media reports she claimed were determined by “stolen” information and facts in an affidavit to the SSA.
The SSA did examine. It observed the knowledge was not a subject of condition safety and which the “prevalence of alleged corruption and irregularities” gave “enough motive” to the media to reveal it.
A different board and administration has since taken in excess of the NLC and So far have taken measures to finish corruption for the institution.
A State Stability Agency (SSA) investigation found which the “prevalence” of alleged corruption and irregularities involving the NLC and its beneficiaries “presented enough motive” for exposure with the media.

The probe into intended “information protection breaches and sabotage of NLC operations” was carried out just after then-NLC board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda wrote towards the SSA in December 2018 requesting it to analyze.

Here's

Nevhutanda’s letter,
an affidavit by at the moment suspended NLC firm secretary Nompumelelo Nene supporting the ask for, and
the security company’s “confidential” conclusions and proposals.
Nevhutanda asked the SSA to research the position of NLC staff within the alleged leaking of information, and Nene, in her affidavit recognized particular media and stories that she claimed associated these leaks.

In the letter outlining its results, the SSA advised the NLC that whilst preserving condition details was “a legal essential directed at safeguarding the sovereignty and integrity in the condition” this only applied to correctly labeled information and facts.

Although it didn't say so straight, the SSA findings implied that the allegedly leaked facts didn't tumble into this group.

Significantly, the SSA made it apparent that the necessity to safeguard condition details “would not prevent any person from blowing the whistle on corruption or irregular or illegal activity”.

The SSA investigation located that the NLC information involved in the alleged breach was “delicate and privileged in character, although not categorized when it comes to the prescripts of your Least Facts Security Benchmarks (Skip)”.

“The leakage on the applicable sensitive Formal NLC information to the media does not pose a danger to nationwide safety,” the SSA claimed, incorporating that the impression from the breaches was reputational.

The SSA report observed “no proof of the factual and incriminating nature versus any on the suspected NLC personnel that might be determined from the data and info interrogated”.

Additionally, it mentioned that “the prevalence of alleged corruption and irregularities inside the NLC and at its beneficiaries does offer ample motive to obtain this sort of uncovered within the media”.

Conspiracy promises
In 2020, Nevhutanda explained to MPs through a session of Parliament’s trade, field and Competitiveness portfolio committee that there was “a conspiracy” in which details “stolen” in the NLC was despatched for the US, exactly where he claimed it absolutely was currently being sold to fund a smear marketing campaign in opposition to the NLC.

He was repeating equivalent statements he had Beforehand made in Parliament, which involved advert hominem assaults on GroundUp and this reporter but was watchful not to call both.

“I came right here In this particular August house final 12 months and reported to honourable members that information regarding our beneficiaries has long been stolen and put in a single state in the united states,” he instructed MPs.

“We called around the Point out Safety Company to come back check into the matter because we have been getting reports that our info is making dollars for media platforms and journalists,” he claimed. “There was discuss, needless to say from one resource, a single media, that spoke A lot about proactive-funding,” Nevhutanda claimed (referring to GroundUp), but failed to tell MPs that the SSA investigation were completed Just about a year previously.

Proactive funding was at the center of your looting in the lottery. It side-stepped the traditional grant process. The NLC could alone detect a task to fund and appoint a non-financial gain organisation to oversee it.

Right after Nevhutanda initial advised Parliament in 2018 that he had questioned the SSA to analyze the intended breach, the South African Nationwide Editors Forum issued an announcement indicating that his remarks reflected “an especially hazardous Frame of mind where the media is being blamed for that NLC’s inherent problems”.

“Rather then investigating why hundreds of thousands can't be accounted for, the NLC has in its place tried to cast question about the integrity in the journalists involved and it has questioned the SSA to research their resources.”

Proactive initiatives manufactured solution
Security flaws determined inside the NLC grant funding process in the course of the SSA’s investigation, seem to have already been utilized being an justification with the NLC to eliminate all proactive-funded assignments from its central grants method.

“In or about 21 December 2019, the classification of all Professional-actively funding jobs was heightened to ‘magic formula’ and projects had been faraway from the grant funding procedure and maintained manually beneath the custody of [Tsietsi Maselwa] the NLC’s [then] Deputy Info Office, Government Supervisor Legal so as to safeguard [the] details,” Nene reported in her affidavit.

“There was plenty of inside dialogue, with plenty of backwards and forwards, about how to proceed to plug the alleged leaks”, a resource, who was in a senior placement within the NLC at time, advised GroundUp. “In the long run, the choice was taken to eliminate each of the proactive projects within the method and Restrict use of a handful of people today”.

Some in that handful of men and women had been implicated in corruption.

Maselwa, who resigned from your NLC various decades in the past, has become implicated in corruption involving lottery funds. He obtained R4.three-million from lottery money allotted to develop a library and museum complicated in Kuruman (see Taung Cultural Tunes and Arts Expo) which he employed to build a house within an upmarket gated advancement in Pretoria. The assets is among several paid for with lottery funds that were frozen after the Asset Forfeiture Unit acquired a preservation purchase in December 2022.

The politically-linked Nevhutanda, who was appointed as the NLC board chairperson by former President Jacob Zuma in 2009 and was close to superior-ups within the ANC leadership, previous NLC former Commissioner Thabang Mampane, and ex-chief operating officer Phillemon Letwaba, have all been implicated in the corruption which overcome the NLC on their look at.

Also implicated are former board customers William Huma, who resigned soon after he was confronted with evidence of how he experienced profited from corrupt lottery grants, and Muthuhadini Madzivhandila, who may have considering that died.

Any time a new administration, including the full board and executive, took around with the NLC in late 2022 and early 2023, they discovered a “chaotic mess” while in the documentation concerning proactive funding, much of which was paper-primarily based. Critical paperwork were being lacking. Documents held for safekeeping by document storage company Metrofile were signed out and by no means returned.

The NLC was in a position to Recuperate copies of some ตรวจ ล้อ ต เต อ รี่ files from its Mimecast electronic mail archiving procedure and the laptops in their assistants and aid team.

Information studies
In his 1 December 2018 letter, dealt with to then SSA Minister Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, Nevhutanda wrote: “The NLC has observed with grave concern feasible info security breaches as well as unauthorised use and/or dissemination of confidential information received as a result of undertaking Formal functions from the Commission by NLC personnel. The activities are intended to undermine the integrity of the Commission even though disrupting the helpful functions [in the NLC] and resulting in insurmountable reputational hurt to your Fee given that the custodian of private information entrusted to it by its beneficiaries.”

His ask for with the SSA to analyze was supported in an affidavit by suspended NLC firm secretary, Nomphumelelo Nene.

Nene is at the moment going through a disciplinary inquiry right after she was unsuccessful in legal motion to put aside results of irregular expenditure on her view.

The goal of her affidavit, Nene claimed, was “to document the situations which transpired associated with information protection breaches at the Nationwide Lotteries Fee”.

She outlined a variety of information reports which she claimed have been the final results of such “breaches” (see at the conclusion of this informative article).

Nene explained that a whistle-blower approached the NLC alleging that considered one of its employees, Sello Qhino, experienced “delivered her classified NLC Information and persistently inspired her to offer the knowledge to GroundUp”.

Qhino, who blew the whistle over a series of dodgy lottery-funded tasks in Kuruman right after attempts to lift The problem internally were ignored, was subsequently fired.

Referring to an eighteen November 2018 report inside the Daily Dispatch with regard to the misappropriation of Lottery cash, Nene said the NLC identified and afterwards suspended Zintle Rungqu. She was an staff inside the NLC’s East London Business, who was the companion and the mother of whistleblower Mzukise Makatse’s three young children.

Rungqu and Makatse believe that Rungqu was punished simply because Makatse blew the whistle. She was suspended and charged internally, Along with the NLC expending R470,000 on attorneys to stand for it, but was found not responsible and permitted to return to operate.

“The widespread Think about these posts is always that [they entail] categorized details regarding proactive funding assignments,” Nene explained in her affidavit.

When Runqu was suspended, Makatse moved out with the family members household to take the heat off her and his children. Facing homelessness, he moved into an Business office within an empty manufacturing unit belonging to a colleague.

The two Makatse and Qhino are participating in an NLC reparation course of action intended to recognise the damage a lot of people experienced with the palms with the NLC. Apologies and, sometimes, economic compensation are expected.

“Some persons had been genuinely influenced very negatively by this … This is absolutely unpleasant,” NLC Commissioner Jodi Scholtz advised the Everyday Maverick very last yr.

“I achieved a few these individuals. It was just so coronary heart-wrenching that their full lives have been turned the wrong way up,” mentioned Scholtz.

Among Those people she satisfied ended up Qhino and Makatse.

Harmless platform essential for whistleblowers
The SSA found the absence at enough time of a suitable channel for whistleblowers to report corruption led them to turn into the media.

“Failure to possess a committed anti-corruption channel will lead to staff members presenting these kinds of situations outside of the NLC,” the SSA mentioned in its findings.

“Specified the magnitude of corruption in point out institutions, it remains critical that it makes sure that the NLC complies with all security prescripts Which its concentrate is on making sure that illegal and irregular perform is sufficiently mitigated in opposition to and by making certain an enough channel for whistle-blowers to report untoward perform without having remaining intimidated.”

It suggested that the NLC set up a “Safe and sound channel” for workers to offer information on any “untoward exercise” that may not avoid or discourage workforce from blowing the whistle. A whistle-blowers plan, depending on the Guarded Disclosures Act 25 of 2000, is often a need.”

Media stories Nene stated
A 10 December 2017 report within the Limpopo Mirror about corruption and maladministration involving the Lottery-funded Vhembe Health and Conditioning Centre in Limpopo. GroundUp has worked carefully with Anton van Zyl, an investigative reporter and operator in the Limpopo Mirror, to show NLC corruption. “The write-up experienced features of knowledge not out there in the general public domain, thereby elevating worry on inside Information and facts security breaches. The allegations within the media had been independently investigated,” Nene explained. “Having said that, workforce accountable for divulging classified information and facts have nonetheless being recognized”;
A 28 January 2018 write-up published by the Dally Dispatch “citing a lot of allegations from your Limpopo Mirror article revealed on ten December 2017 as well as a new allegation relating to a former staff with the name of Mzukisi Makatse. He was charged and summarily dismissed to the danger brought on into the organisation.”
A 16 November 2018 write-up from the Lowvelder regarding the misappropriation of NLC money involving a lottery-funded drug rehabilitation centre. GroundUp has documented how, in spite of receiving R27-million in lottery grants, the rehab hasn't been concluded. “The Lowvelder report contained categorized information when it comes to NLC plan, elevating additional fears of inside details stability breaches,” Nene stated in her affidavit. “The prima facie proof with regard to these allegations didn't warrant an impartial Investigation, even so [it] highlighted the heightened details protection risks within the NLC.”
A 22 November 2018 GroundUp expose about a dodgy R27.5-million grant to Denzhe Principal Treatment, a hijacked NPO. Nene explained GroundUp experienced verified in its Tale that it had been according to leaked NLC documents. This was Regardless of the NLC rejecting a PAIA (Promotion of Usage of Information) ask for for facts regarding the task, she explained