The South African Revenue Service (SARS) says its delay of a R100 million IT tender process was a pre-emptive strike to ensure the integrity of the IT tendering process.
SARS announced this week that it was replacing the panel involved in awarding an IT hardware tender to prevent possible corruption.
This came after the SARS corruption committee was tipped off that a small business had approached one of the bidders with an offer to influence the outcome of the tender in its favour.
"There hasn`t been much delay," says Sechaba Nkosi, SARS spokesperson. "The old committee has been replaced, because doubts had been cast." The tender is still expected to be awarded by the end of October.
He assures that this was not an instance of corruption having taken place, but SARS will not make the names of the new panel public to avoid further tampering of this nature.
"This was not corruption, this was a pre-emptive strike. It was not a question of whether the law had been broken or not, but this was done to protect the integrity of SARS."
The tender process involved the supply of hardware to the value of R100 million. Declining to give any further details on the companies involved in the tendering process, Nkosi says that after last month`s launch of E-filing, which allows people to do group returns by e-mail, SARS has been investing in hardware. "We hope to extend this service to individuals soon, meaning we have to upgrade IT hardware and software all the time."
SARS says in its official statement that the bidders had been briefed on the hitch in the process, and have been asked to assist SARS in ensuring the highest level of ethical conduct. Any businesses found guilty of interfering with procurement processes will be immediately blacklisted.
"The integrity of SARS in all its dealings with suppliers must be of the highest standard," says Ken Jarvis, SARS CIO. "We are after all spending the public`s money. We take this kind of corruption very seriously and even while the new panel is doing its work, we will continue with the investigation into what transpired. If we find any SARS employees on the wrong side of the fence, we will take the strongest possible action against them."
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