Kabuso report dusted off

[caption id="attachment_215641" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Mayor Athol Trollip, right, and municipal public accounts committee chairman Lance Grootboom at a media briefing on the Kabuso Report yesterday
Picture: Eugene Coetzee[/caption]

Municipality to consider possible action against those implicated

The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality is heading back to the drawing board to check whether it can pursue action against some of those implicated in the Kabuso forensic report.

Mayor Athol Trollip and municipal public accounts committee (MPAC) chairman Lance Grootboom (ACDP) said yesterday they believed there was enough evidence in the report to warrant a further look into six of the matters highlighted in the report.

The report, which is at least seven years old, details irregular expenditure on projects and how millions of rands are owed to the city in outstanding rates and service charges.

It also exposed alleged corruption and maladministration pertaining to property leases and tenders.

It was commissioned in 2009 by then Eastern Cape local government MEC Sicelo Gqobana and handed over to the municipality in 2011.

There has, ever since, been slow progress in pursuing legal action against those implicated.

Trollip’s announcement comes about a year after the metro’s audit committee concluded that the facts and findings in the Kabuso report were so poor that there were no prospects of recovering any money that was lost.

City manager Johann Mettler said at the time that the probe into malpractice and alleged irregularities was inconclusive to provide sufficient evidence for successful prosecution.

In 2012, the Hawks wrapped up its investigation into those incriminated in the report as investigators believed no one else was criminally liable.

Only one of those incriminated in the report, business owner Yvonne Zuma, was prosecuted and convicted of fraud for falsifying names in her tender to the municipality to manage the curio shop at the Red Location Museum.