Zwane must face lifestyle audit over Free State housing contracts

16 January 2017

The DA will write to the Commissioner of SARS, Tom Moyane, to request that SARS conduct a lifestyle audit on the Minister of Mineral Resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, to establish the extent of his personal benefit from unauthorized payments to contracts in the Free State housing scandal.

It is astonishing that Minister Zwane used his previous role as MEC of Housing in the Free State to sanction multi-million rand payments to contractors who either didn't do any work or didn’t finish the projects they were contracted to do.

The fact that Minister Zwane violated his previous department's supply chain and procurement processes, and fabricated a plan to deceive the National Ministry of Housing on its spending trends, shows that Minister Zwane went to great lengths to ensure that millions of state funds were channelled to contractors.

In light of this, there is every reasonable suspicion to conclude that Mr Zwane may have personally benefitted, directly or indirectly, from these unlawful payments – a lifestyle audit by SARS is the best means to establish if this is indeed the case.

Issued by Solly Malatsi, DA Shadow Minister of Human Settlement, 16 January 2017