THE government needs to take a “hard-line approach” in dealing with corruption and financial misconduct in the public service by, among other steps, blacklisting and instituting criminal and civil proceedings against officials found guilty of financial misconduct, a forensics investigator said on Monday.
Corruption and financial misconduct is rampant in the public service. The government has taken drastic measures such as naming and shaming corrupt officials. In June this year, Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Jeff Radebe published the names of 42 people convicted of fraud and corruption and promised to release many more.
The Public Service Commission recently published findings showing that financial misconduct in the public service had grown rapidly over the past three years. Financial misconduct grew from R100m in 2008-09 to R346m in 2009-10 and soared to R932m in 2010-11.
Peter Allwright, a director of Horizon Forensics, said on Monday that financial misconduct in the public service was “getting out of hand”. He said the Public Service Commission estimated that financial misconduct in 2011-12 could exceed R1bn.
“The findings confirm the widespread belief that there is a higher prevalence of financial misconduct and a decline in ethical behaviour and conduct,” Mr Allwright said.
He said the situation was being worsened by the absence of consistent and appropriate sanctioning of officials.
“In the most recent annual report on financial misconduct, 88% of officials were found guilty of misconduct in the cases but the most common sanction for financial misconduct was a final written warning (43%),” Mr Allwright said.
“Only 19% of officials found guilty of financial misconduct were discharged from the public service. The majority of perpetrators remain in their positions and often continue to commit financial misconduct. The losses from the finalised cases of financial misconduct totalled R346m, and only 13% of this amount was recovered from officials (R44m) while 87% remained lost to the public service (R302m).”
In 2009-10, no criminal action was taken in 57% of cases. Such action was taken in only 22% of cases.
“The situation worsened during 2010-11, where no criminal action was taken in 76% of cases whereas criminal action was taken in only 20% of cases. The findings for 2011-12 have not been published but preliminary statistics reveal that 39% of cases provide no indication of criminal action or civil proceedings, there is no reporting on the recovery of money lost or recovered from unlawful behaviour, and less than 1% of departments provide an indication of the trend of financial misconduct cases.”
Mr Allwright said although some government institutions were considering blacklisting those found guilty, this option had not been thoroughly explored.
“We cannot have officials who are found guilty of financial misconduct jumping from one local government (institution) to another,” he said.
Other measures to explore include active recovery of unauthorised, irregular, fruitless or wasteful expenditure; the implementation of monitoring and reporting mechanisms; and the implementation of fraud prevention and fraud response plans.
Mr Allwright said the government also had to appoint independent experts to conduct serious financial misconduct investigations so that the periods of precautionary suspensions and investigations could be substantially shortened.