Minister Patricia de Lille on irregular payments recovered by SA Tourism
29 April 2024
In the interest of transparency, I wish to update the public on a matter where I had recently been made aware of a number of irregular payments which were made through South African Tourism’s United States of America and South Africa offices for services not rendered.
SA Tourism is the official tourism marketing agency of South Africa and an entity of the Department of Tourism. As part of its mandate, SA Tourism has a number of hub offices in key source market countries around the world to enable officials to interact with key partners in executing their duties of promoting and marketing South Africa as a top travel destination.
I was recently informed by SA Tourism that there had been a number of irregular payments and invoices noted which do not meet the definition of compliant and valid or internal control verification standards.
A number of irregular invoices were created about three days before the previous financial year end (31 March 2023) and processed piecemeal in order to override banking controls.