By Michael Hamlyn

A team of lawyers has been assembled by the Department of Trade and Industry to draw up charges to be laid against the chief executive and the chief information officer of the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro).

The team assembled by Rob Davies, the Trade and Industry Minister has until the end of this month to formulate the charges, which may, he told MPs on Tuesday, lead to disciplinary or to criminal procedures.

They follows a R1 million forensic investigation into the allegations of fraud and corruption surrounding the allocation of a tender for building an enterprise content management system at Cipro.

The investigation itself was consequent on a probe carried out by the auditor general into the procurement of the system.

Speaking to the standing committee on public accounts, Davies said that the department is also proposing to repudiate the contract for the system, though it will allow representations to be made by the successful contractor.

Both the chief executive, Keith Sendwe and the chief information officer, Michael Twum-Darko are currently suspended in connection with the pending charges, but Davies said that there may be other bad apples in the barrel who could also be charged.

Sendwe has been on sick leave up until now, and Twum-Darko was earlier suspended in order to protect whistle-blowers in the organisation.

The tender to the value of R152.7 million was let to Valor IT at the end of March 2009.

The appointment of the company was followed with absurd rapidity by a first payment of R56 million in the first week of April.

It was only later that DTI officials discovered that the company was in fact a two-man outfit (one of whom was a dentist), which had been in existence for only three months, and which had a reported turnover of less than R2.2 million.

According to Davies both the Cipro executives are still in the country, though he added that the government has 'taken precautions' to ensure that continues to be operative.

"We are also in contact with other agencies in government to make sure that the loot does not leave as well, so far as we can," he said.

The Scopa hearing led to MPs asking a number of extremely pointed and angry questions of the men and women still running the office, those in the State Information Technology Agency, the Department of Public Service and Administration as well as the director general of the DTI, Tshediso Matona.

Source: I-Net Bridge