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A view from inside a court of law.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng is set to lay criminal charges today against the former Head of the Gauteng Transport Department, Ronald Swartz.
This follows a report by auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which revealed over R400 million in irregular expenditure on bus subsidies during the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 financial years. The report also found R70 million in fruitless and wasteful expenditure for the 2015-2016 financial year.
DA spokesperson for Roads and Transport in Gauteng, Evert Du Plessis, said the party had initially been denied access to the department’s records.
“We were legally barred from the department. We then followed up with a PAIA application to obtain the PwC report. From what we see in the report, there was a vast amount of money that was spent irregularly or fell under fruitless and wasteful expenditure for bus subsidies,” says Du Plessis.
“A number of officials were implicated and that is what the charges that we would be laying this morning. There needs to be an investigation to see where these monies went and why has nothing been recovered,” he adds.
