Cape Town - The City of Cape Town has dismissed as “baseless” a list of allegations of possible illegality and a conflict of interest made in a complaint lodged with the public protector against the City’s executive director for corporate services Craig Kesson.
Cape Town activist Roscoe Palm, who lodged the complaint, said in his letter to the public protector that Kesson landed a job with auditing firm PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PWC) as a trade-off for using his City post to award PWC lucrative work.
“After giving out numerous panel tenders to PwC, he has been recruited by PwC. This raises the spectre of him having bought his position at PwC with taxpayers’ money. This is a clear conflict of interest that is undisclosed. It is unethical and possibly illegal.
“I am aware of many other issues and I am willing to assist the office of the public protector to get to the bottom of this, as yet unscrutinised abuse of power and public money,” Palm said.
He also quoted an October 6 Twitter status by Good Party Cape Town mayoral campaign manager Wilfred Solomons-Johannes which purports to prove Kesson was involved in signing off on the panel tenders to PWC.
Reached for comment City spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo said: “These are baseless allegations which have been posted on social media by Solomons-Johannes, who is an aggrieved former employee.
“The documents posted by Solomons-Johannes have been misrepresented and constitute misinformation and the City repeats, yet again, that Kesson has never awarded a tender to PWC nor issued a work-brief to them.
“The document in question is for the purposes of work-scope and does not allocate or award business to any contractor which Kesson has never done and does not have the ability to do.”
Tyhalibongo said in the case of the document cited in the complaint to the public protector, the scope had been written to provide clear and detailed instructions of the works and expectations that were to be delivered regardless of contractor.
He said the issuing of a work brief is only when a contract manager allocates the work to a tenderer supervised by the City’s supply chain management department. Kesson has never been a contract manager, nor issued a work brief.
Responding to the City, Solomons-Johannes said: “I firmly stand by my position. The whole situation stinks and it needs to be investigated by the relevant authorities.
“I consider what happened a gross violation and tantamount to maladministration and financial misconduct in terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act and other statutory laws.”
Meanwhile, Kesson is serving out his notice at the City as per his contract.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za