South Africa: Amnesty Offer for House-Subsidy Crooks

October 20, 2006
Posted to the web October 20, 2006
Thousands of housing-subsidy fraudsters are expected to be offered amnesty as an incentive to confess their crimes.
The housing department's planned initiative, which it hopes to launch by the end of this financial year, will be linked to a wide-ranging investigation by the Special Investigating Unit of housing-subsidy fraud, should this get the presidential go-ahead.
The unit is also investigating massive social-grant fraud, and has so far identified 22000 irregular beneficiaries employed by the state.

The housing investigation would target thousands of government employees and other nonqualifying subsidy beneficiaries as well as housing contractors and developers.
The planned involvement of the unit follows the finding of auditor-general Shauket Fakie that more than R323m in housing fraud had been committed by March 2004. He found subsidies had been allocated irregularly to people who were dead, were already beneficiaries, or who did not qualify.

Among the irregular beneficiaries were more than 7000 government employees earning more than the maximum qualifying income and 6708 applicants who were younger than 21.
Housing director-general Itumeleng Kotsoane said at a media briefing yesterday that the department had prepared an application for a proclamation by President Thabo Mbeki to authorise the unit to investigate.
The amnesty was intended to clean up the subsidy system.

We don't want to send a message through the amnesty that corruption pays, said Kotsoane. Our intention is to try to clear the cloud that forever casts doubt on the credibility of the department and our subsidy system. We will look at each case individually to assess the applicability of the amnesty.

He said the unit had so far been involved only on a piecemeal basis in investigating housing fraud provincially. A proclamation would allow it to conduct a holistic investigation. An agreement setting out the scope of the investigation had been signed with the unit, he said.

Kotsoane said the department had linked its databases with those of other departments, such as home affairs, in a bid to close loopholes for fraud.
It was also in talks with revenue service officials to access its database. The unit had already investigated 88 cases of fraud.

Of these, 41 were with the police, 18 were in court, three had resulted in convictions and three had resulted in acquittals.

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