Surviving the deadly task of managing state buying

Outgoing National Treasury top official Kenneth Brown says he received death threats following investigations into major government contracts, including those awarded to companies linked with the Gupta family.

Brown announced this week he was leaving the Treasury and told an interview with the Sunday Times how he had to be assigned bodyguards after receiving anonymous calls threatening his life when he started cleaning up the tender system.

He suspects the threats came from disgruntled government service providers who feared his appointment as chief procurement officer would squeeze them out of lucrative contracts.

The threatening calls started in 2013 after he introduced measures to fight corruption and wastage in the government’s multibillion-rand tender system.

When he reported the calls to his political principals at the Treasury, the police VIP protection unit conducted a security risk assessment. It determined that two permanent bodyguards should be deployed to protect him. A security assessment was also conducted at his home in Kameeldrift, northeast of Pretoria, where he lives with his wife.

“There is a safety kind of element … with a job like this. Just by renegotiating a tender or a contract, it means somebody would have to bring down their price from R10 to R5, it means that this person loses.

“By increasing competition in the system, people who have been getting these things as freebies will lose out,” said Brown.

“What’s troubling is that people are digging on a continuous basis for dirt on you.

“That actually heightens the security alertness. Because people will be frustrated if they can’t find dirt on this guy. What will be the next thing they do? You don’t know.”

Insiders at Treasury said what was worrying was that those making the threats knew Brown’s movements at weekends and about his programmes long before even his staff were aware.

“He told us they would tell him to watch his back as they were watching him,” said an official. “But the threats stopped soon after the SAPS became involved.”

Police spokeswoman Brigadier Sally de Beer would not discuss details of Brown’s protection.

“It is deemed not fit to disclose any details in this regard,” she said.

As the first chief procurement officer, Brown ruffled feathers among some beneficiaries of government contracts.

His investigations led to the Treasury blocking Eskom from giving Gupta-linked company Tegeta Resources an R855-million extension of a coal contract without an open tender.

Brown led a probe of the SABC’s suspicious procurement of a R44-million studio without tender. The deal was allegedly orchestrated by Hlaudi Motsoeneng last year.

Brown previously worked as the head of the Treasury’s inter-governmental relations. This week he urged parliament to scrutinise all controversial public sector contracts such as Eskom’s dealing with Tegeta, and irregularities at other parastatals such as the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, as well as the SABC.

“What stops parliament from having similar hearings from these entities? So they could understand what’s happening, whether it’s Denel or Prasa.”

A former school principal, Brown is leaving public service at the end of the month after serving in the Treasury for 19 years.

He is due to assume an executive position at Standard Bank in February as the head of its public sector banking.

This week, Mzwanele Manyi, a supporter of President Jacob, claimed that Brown was leaving under a cloud. Manyi submitted a dossier to the Treasury, allegedly detailing suspicious financial transactions in Brown’s bank accounts.

But Brown laughed at the allegations. “I am not worried about him ,” he said.

Brown said he had informed former Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene of his decision to leave in September last year. Nene agreed, but Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan asked him to stay after Nene’s disastrous removal.

“When PG and them approached me and said ‘Look, stay another six months’, I agreed because I felt that he was right. There were too many loose ends in the office that I still needed to sort out.”

Brown said that in the past three years his office had saved the government billions, including up to R500-million a year on advertising. There had been further savings on travel and accommodation.

“We’ve negotiated air travel deals with British Airways and SAA, where we were spending, for example, R6000 on a return economy-class ticket to Cape Town. We are now spending in the region of R3500.”

Brown said the office of the chief procurement officer was renegotiating government IT contracts worth about R30-billion and officials were in talks with software giant Microsoft, which charges the government about R2.2-billion in software licences.

He said they wanted to reduce IT spending by up to 20% through negotiated contracts.