ValorIT, the company awarded the R153.7 million tender to install the Cipro enterprise content management (ECM) system, is fighting on two fronts to retain the contract and fend off Mantra Consulting from attaching its assets.
Yesterday, trade and industry minister Rob Davies said in Parliament that ValorIT had 10 days in which to reply to a letter sent on his behalf as to why the Cipro (Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office) tender, awarded in February 2008, should not be repudiated.
“The contract is not under dispute for technical reasons, but as to the process in which the tender was awarded,” Davies told a Parliamentary media briefing.
Just prior to that, he told Parliament's financial watchdog, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, that there is a process in place to repudiate the tender. He also stated that two of Cipro's top officials - CEO Keith Sendwe and CIO Michael Twum-Darko - had been suspended as they would face internal disciplinary charges and possibly criminal charges related to the awarding of the tender.
Adding to the controversy is that Mantra Consulting last week won a court order stating that ValorIT had to pay it R2.5 million owed due to the finalising of the tender.
Today, ValorIT chairman Josias Molele repudiated many of the statements made before Scopa yesterday, based on an auditor-general's report into the awarding of the tender.
Molele said he received Davies' letter at 5.30pm on Monday, that it asked three questions and that his firm was working on a response. However, he refused to state what the questions were.
Molele did assert that the business case document that the auditor-general had questioned was not confidential and that it was easy to obtain from Cipro.
Secondly, he claims the total tender budget was R184 million and that other bids had come in for amounts of R184 million, R156 million, R153.7 million, R84 million and R65 million.
“I can't recall the names of all the companies, but I remember the amounts well,” he said.
Molele said the questions about how ValorIT's bid over the two percentage point variation, as raised by the auditor-general in its investigation and implying that ValorIT had inside information, did not stand.
He said the R56 million paid to ValorIT, for the purchase of the Tibco software on which the ECM system was to be built, was only paid in August 2008 and not immediately as indicated by Cipro CFO Renier du Toit in Parliament yesterday.
“The price paid for the software included a three-year licence fee; however, as is usual in an IT contract, the support and maintenance fee had to be paid on an annual basis,” Molele said.
He noted that ValorIT has been in business since August 2006 and had not been formed three months before being awarded the contract, as has been alleged.
“We became a SITA [State IT Agency] preferred supplier three months before the awarding of the contract,” Molele said.
Mantra Consulting CEO Abe Mbulawa confirms Molele's assertion that the business case was not confidential.
“I was instructed by Twum-Darko to work with ValorIT. I don't know why as I did not know that company from a bar of soap. It is true I recommended Twum-Darko for the position at Cipro, but I also recommended another person and the organisation made its own decision,” he said.
Mbulawa said he was awaiting the outcome of ValorIT's appeal, before finally attaching its assets.
“I want Cipro's system to succeed and so I am approaching the whole matter very cautiously,” he said.
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