MEDIA STATEMENT BY FREEDOM UNDER LAW

Freedom Under Law welcomes the order granted by the Constitutional Court this morning in its application for an order that the profits made over the duration of the CPS/SASSA social grants contract be audited and verified afresh. The application was necessary because the Court’s original auditing and verification it had ordered at the time of the social grants crisis was not properly complied with.

SASSA’s auditors maintained that they had not been granted full access to the working papers of CPS’s auditors and required further financial information relating to other entities within the network of companies of CPS’s parent company, Net 1. Even without full access, however, SASSA’s auditors estimated that CPS may have understated its profits by approximately R800 million, bringing its total profit to well over a billion Rand.

In terms of today’s judgment, SASSA’s auditors are to be provided with outstanding documentation by CPS’s auditors so that an updated verification report can be submitted to Treasury. If Treasury does not approve the updated verification report, it must make its own determination of the profits earned by CPS or explain to the Court what further processes are required to determine the profit. The Court deferred FUL’s application for an order for repayment of profits to SASSA, holding that “it would be proper to consider the issue of profits once all the necessary information is placed before this Court.”