PRETORIA – The article published in an online publication yesterday suggesting that “SAPS blew R1.6 billion” is misleading and nothing more than being further from the truth.

The Internal Audit Report, on which the article was based, initially surfaced around October 2020. The said document was an unsigned and untested report which bore a classification stamp of “Confidential”.

The said report has since surfaced on other platforms but we are not aware of any allegations or investigations ever resulting from this.

Had the South African Police Service been given a right of reply to this publication, the journalist would have learnt that the SAPS Supply Chain Division was granted a deviation by the Accounting Officer on the 26th of March 2020 which allowed Supply Chain to make emergency procurements of PPEs meaning that proper procurement processes and procedures were adhered to.

At the start of the pandemic the much needed PPEs were scarce and the available ones were being sold at a much higher rate than normal, hence the Accounting Officer had to grant the deviation.

Furthermore, the PPE procurement process in the South African Police Service, like other Government Departments, came under scrutiny by the National Fusion Centre, a Centre which acted as the co-ordinating body of law enforcement agencies tasked to look into Covid-19 graft.

To this end, detailed submissions on the procurement of PPEs have been made to the Fusion Centre. The SAPS management also went further and reported companies which sold PPEs at inflated prices to the Competition Commission of South Africa.

Source: South African Police Service