The Blatant Bribery Attempt That Backfired: Has Corruption Become Normalised?

The single greatest threat to corruption is a courageous human being.I have learnt this from two decades as a forensic investigator, fighting corruption and fraud every day.Yet tragically, South Africa’s recent past is peppered with far too many courageous people who have paid the ultimate price for their determination to expose the truth. The most recent of these happened just last week, with the cold-blooded assassination of Marius 'Vlam' van der Merwe, suspected to be due to the testimony he gave at the Madlanga Commission.According to news reports, Van der Merwe, 41, told the commission that suspended Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department acting chief, Brigadier Julius Mkhwanazi, allegedly ordered him to dump the body of a suspect killed by EMPD officers in a bid to cover up a murder.It may be this testimony that cost him his life. He was shot multiple times in front of his family outside their Brakpan home last Friday night.Click below to read the full article. https://lnkd.in/dq6GN86h

How scammers exploit shopping season and how you can protect yourself

Pieter Loedolff and his wife Angelique thought they'd found a Black Friday bargain: a PlayStation 5 advertised on Facebook Marketplace for R3,850, marked down from R4,500. They drove to a house in Crossroads, Nyanga, to collect it. When they arrived, a woman directed them to wait. Then men appeared. One held Pieter at gunpoint. Another stabbed him repeatedly, demanding money. Angelique lay on the car hooter, screaming for help. They escaped, but without their money and deeply traumatized.Half of all South Africans have been scammed at least once, with most incidents happening on social media, according to JustMoney's ‘Money & Me Survey’. More than 100,000 cyberattacks were recorded on banking accounts in 2024, costing South Africans around R1.8 billion. Digital banking fraud cases almost doubled from 31,612 in 2023 to 64,000 in 2024.The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners South Africa confirms that fraud consistently spikes during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas. Scammers exploit the urgency and excitement of shopping season. When you're racing against time to grab deals or find the perfect gift, they count on you to skip the safety checks.Here's how they operate and how you can stop them.Click the link to read the full story - https://lnkd.in/df2iPG_J

The Gap Between Investigation and Enforcement

A wise person once said, “Never confuse motion with action.” I’m sadly reminded of this far too often when I look at South Africa’s recent past.We all know our country loves a good commission of inquiry. It’s our default response to pretty much anything. Public outcry over a lack of service delivery? No problem, we’re forming a commission to investigate.Forensic audits revealing local government fraud? Excellent – our newly created commission is looking into it.But that’s about as far as we go. Time, effort and eye-watering amounts of money are spent on commissions of inquiry and then…crickets. Regardless of the outcomes of these commissions – many of which highlight significant areas of concern, and often point out the exact individuals responsible – nothing further gets done.There is motion, but no action.Click below to read the full article. https://lnkd.in/dUZdHp9f

A Year In Review: There Was Plenty More In 2024

These days, it can be tempting to focus only on the negative. As South Africans, we’ve had, after all, another rather challenging year. And I’m not suggesting we don’t acknowledge the bad things that have happened. But I think it’s also important not to let them completely overshadow the positive aspects of the year.

Fraud and Corruption in South Africa: What Have We Learned

This quote from their 2023 paper, The World’s Anti-Corruption Efforts Need a Reset, sums up exactly where we’re going wrong in our efforts to fight fraud and corruption in South Africa.
We need to combat the grass roots behaviour that promotes corruption in our country if we are ever to stand a chance of winning this seemingly unwinnable war.
 
 

Building Trust in the Public Sector: A Call for Accountability

Only 17% of South Africans believe our leaders tell the truth, and often use euphemisms to mask the realities of governance failures and incompetence, corporate exploitation, and individual greed.
 
 

The Best Government Money Can Buy: How Corrupt SEO Bailouts are Bankrupting Our Country

On December 8, 2020, business, labour and government signed an agreement stating that money from the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) would be used to fund yet another bailout for Eskom.
Geordin Hill-Lewis, the DA’s Shadow Minister of Finance called the deal a betrayal of workers and the public.
Which is pretty much what can be said for every single bailout the government has ever given to our limping State Owned Enterprises in the past few years.

Whistleblowing - Counting The Cost of Courage

South Africa’s reputation as an ethically dodgy and pervasively corrupt country is sadly becoming as much a part of our identity as our magnificent scenery, wonderful game parks and colourful people. And, as so often happens when something becomes this common place, we become desensitised to it. Our sense of disgust and moral outrage lessens with every story of corruption that emerges. We develop a shoulder-shrugging, “well, what do you expect?” attitude that makes even just the thought of ever eradicating corrupt practices from both our private and public sectors a seemingly unattainable pipe dream.
 

A Crisis or a Leadership Crisis?

Power, greed and pride – a toxic triumvirate driving decisions of bad leaders. Scratch the surface of a crisis and, predictably, individuals, groups or nations with toxic motives will be revealed. Typically, the origin of man-made crises is flawed leadership.