{"id":190408,"date":"2016-12-07T11:27:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T09:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=190408"},"modified":"2016-12-07T11:28:50","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T09:28:50","slug":"prasas-missing-billions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/government\/190408-prasas-missing-billions.html","title":{"rendered":"Prasa&#8217;s missing billions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) has incurred <a href=\"http:\/\/ewn.co.za\/2016\/11\/30\/prasa-contracts-worth-r24-bln-investigated-for-criminality\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>R13.9 billion in irregular expenditure<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and 142 contracts worth R24 billion are being investigated for corruption.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessdaytv.co.za\/shows\/newsleader\/2016\/12\/01\/prasa-in-hot-water1\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Acting Prasa CEO Collins Letsoalo said<\/strong><\/a> it was a collapse of controls at Prasa which led to the financial mess &#8211; a mess which is threatening the company\u2019s sustainability.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was also a sheer disregard of procurement rules, regulations, and the law. This summarises what happened at Prasa over the last few years,\u201d said Letsoalo.<\/p>\n<p>Prasa executives faced parliament&#8217;s Standing Committee on Public Accounts regarding the issue, but it was clear there was still not enough accountability.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow many people have been arrested so far? How many cases are concluded? Because since you started, a lot of investigations have been going on but there\u2019s no conclusion,\u201d said MPs.<\/p>\n<p>Hawks head Berning Ntlemeza told parliament they have started investigating four of the over 140 cases referred to it by Prasa.<\/p>\n<p>The DA said it will request the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to summon the Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters, to present a plan on how she will hold all relevant parties accountable.<\/p>\n<p>The more pressing question, however, is: Where is the money?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessdaytv.co.za\/shows\/theweekthatwas\/2016\/12\/02\/the-week-that-was-part-1\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Speaking to Business Day TV<\/strong><\/a>, David Shapiro, deputy chairman at Sasfin Securities, said an enormous amount of money has been spent without any idea of where it has gone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHas it gone to Porches, Lamborghinis, or a new house? Where is the money?\u201d asked Shapiro.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know how many students we can educate on R14 billion,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/168829-guptas-deny-trying-to-capture-r51-billion-prasa-tender.html\">Guptas deny trying to capture R51 billion Prasa tender<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa has incurred R13.9 billion in irregular expenditure and contracts worth R24 billion are being investigated for corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":100166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18668],"tags":[9766,35,37711,12715],"class_list":["post-190408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-collins-letsoalo","tag-headline","tag-passenger-rail-agency-of-south-africa","tag-prasa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190738,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190408\/revisions\/190738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}