Lottery Chief Heads to South African Court to Stop Graft Probe

National Lotteries Commission Chief Operations Officer Phillemon Letwaba has gone to court to have a forensic report into Lottery corruption declared illegal , Raymond Joseph of GroundUp reports.

Letwaba claims that Abel Dlamini, the executive chairman of SkX - a member firm of global consulting firm Protiviti - is biased and has a conflict of interest. SkX was commissioned by the Lottery to probe internal corruption. In the court application, Letwaba said that the non-profit company in which Dlamini's apparent relatives are listed as directors, received an almost U.S.$1 million grant from the Lottery soon after SkX was appointed.

This marks the second attempt by a senior member of the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) to stop legal action over alleged corruption at the organisation. In March 2022, NLC head Thabang Mampane sought the Supreme Court of Appeal to overturn a ruling made in the high court in Pretoria.

Mampane argued that the ruling - which found Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Ebrahim Patel was legally empowered to initiate an investigation in 2020 into allegations of corruption in grant allocations at the NLC - failed to consider that the section of the Lotteries Act relied on to determine the ruling only gave the minister the power to prohibit the payout of a grant if it was likely to be used for an improper and unlawful purpose and only after consulting the Board.

Alleged corruption at the NLC prompted an investigation by the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) who presented their findings to Parliament's Trade and Industry Portfolio Committee. "The SIU investigation has uncovered a web of corruption related to NLC funding and flow of funds to NLC officials, board members, and their family members. The SIU is pursuing all individuals involved in the syphoning of NLC money," the SIU tweeted during the presentation at the time.