Johannesburg – SA Tourism has recovered R35 million of irregular payments made to service providers, where no services had been rendered.
The irregular payments were processed by executives, who are no longer employed by SA Tourism, from the U.S.A. and the SA offices.
In a statement on Monday, the Department of Tourism gave details of how the money was siphoned from SA Tourism.
SA Tourism is the official tourism marketing agency of South Africa and an entity of the Department of Tourism.
The department said as part of its mandate, SA Tourism has several hub offices in key source market countries around the world.
This enables SA Tourism 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,” said Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille.
The department said several irregular invoices were created about three days before the previous financial year’s end, (31 March 2023), and “processed piecemeal” to override banking controls.
The irregular payments were signed off by the then-acting chief financial officer, chief operations officer, and the then-acting CEO.
However, the discovery of the irregular payments was triggered by a review by SA Tourism, which confirmed that a significant portion that was paid to a media agency during March 2023 was for services that had not been rendered at the time of disbursement.
The media agency was informed of the irregular payments and it conceded that a significant portion of the money received from SA Tourism was for services not rendered.
Minister De Lille said: “These irregular payments are completely shocking and it is unacceptable that officials entrusted with public funds continue to act with such contempt of public finance laws and regulations,”
Minister De Lille added: “We will not leave this matter unaccounted for.
“The internal audit report is being finalised and the matter has also been reported to the Auditor General of South Africa to investigate.”
The department said following months of communication with the respective media agency to pay back the money for services not rendered, SA Tourism has been able to recover all the funds linked to the irregular payments, for services not rendered.
An amount of R35million has been returned to the SA Tourism account.
“We are relieved that all the money has been recovered from the irregular payments,”‘ said Minister De Lille.
“I can also confirm that the Auditor General of South Africa is in the process of finalising a delegation from the AG’s office to do an audit on the SA Tourism New York office.”
