City Press reports that the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) allegedly spent more than R2 billion on a joint venture company that was registered just a day before a multibillion-rand tender was awarded to it.

The tender was awarded to Crig Maziya Joint Venture on 21 July 2023. Crig Maziya is a joint venture between China Railway, China Wuhan Electrification Engineering and Maziya General Services. The tender was for the planning, design, supply, construction, installation, testing, commissioning and maintenance of a new and expanded, fully integrated and future-proofed system for a mobile communication-railway redundancy network in Prasa's Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape regions. The payment is now at the centre of a Hawks investigation after Police Minister Senzo Mchunu was alerted to the alleged fraud in a whistleblower complaint. Mchunu forwarded the complaint to the Hawks and the matter will be investigated by the Serious Economic Offences Unit. The whistleblower complaint alleges that, for several years, Prasa was a toxic state-owned enterprise that instigated corruption, violated supply chain management policies and laundered money through the manipulation of tender procurement processes. The letter reads: “In all these unspeakable deeds, these two [names withheld] have been identified as the kingpins of corruption at Prasa, capable of manipulating supply chain management policies and payment processes through various committees and legal opinions without the knowledge and approval of Prasa's board of directors.”

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Abram Mashego at News24 (subscription or trial registration required)

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