The National Treasury has discovered about 12,000 dead people in its register of companies that do business with the state. This was among the outcomes of a clean-up of the information system that the Treasury’s procurement office undertook as the government battled to rein in spending, said Schalk Human, the unit’s acting head. It has also identified about 14,000 state employees who are listed as directors of companies that have been awarded state contracts in violation of regulations. "We will report on them even if we drag those 14,000 to court by their hair and lock them up," Human said in an interview earlier in May. Fighting graft and achieving savings have become even more necessary since two ratings companies downgraded SA’s debt to junk. Fraud and inflated prices from suppliers consumed as much as 40% of the state’s R600bn budget for goods and services, Human’s predecessor, Kenneth Brown, said in 2016. Some people set up companies with fake documents or the identities of de...
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