Investigations into the irregular R150-million Digital Vibes contract have so far yielded little results as only R12-million has been repaid by those who benefitted illegally.

According to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), approximately R22-million is contained in several bank accounts resulting from cash flows from the Digital Vibes Nedbank account.

On Tuesday, SIU head advocate Andy Mothibi and his senior management presented their investigations into the procurement of Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) and other related matters to Parliament's finance watchdog Scopa.

Mothibi told the committee that on 17 June 2021, the Special Tribunal granted the SIU an interim preservation order or interdict against Digital Vibes and 11 others for just over R22-million.

"In terms of the interim order, the SIU had to file the review application on or before 29 July 2021. The SIU submitted and filed its review application to the Special Tribunal against Digital Vibes and 29 others to review and set aside the two contracts that were awarded by the national Department of Health (NDoH) to Digital Vibes in respect of the NHI media campaign and the Covid-19 media campaign, and to recover the full value (approximately R150-million) paid out under such unlawful and invalid contract," Mothibi said in his presentation.

He said thus far, the SIU had received R12 179 429.90 from or on behalf of some of the respondents.

Close associates

The health department initially contracted Digital Vibes for the National Health Insurance (NHI) campaign in 2019.

Former health minister Zweli Mkhize allegedly pressured officials to appoint the company owned by his close associates Tahera Mather and Naadhira Mitha.

According to the SIU, Mkhize approved two budget applications for Digital Vibes for NHI communication amounting to R132-million.

On 20 January 2020, an amount of R46 939 550 was approved 52 days after the Digital Vibes service-level agreement (SLA) was signed on 29 November 2019.

On 16 June 2020, R85 502 500 was approved for NHI communication work (from 6 March 2020, Digital Vibes only delivered Covid-19 communication services). This amount was approved 199 days after Digital Vibes' SLA was signed on 29 November 2019.

The SIU determined from the Tender Evaluation Committee (TEC) report, containing the combined scores of all the Bid Evaluation Committee (BEC) members, that one BEC member's score was altered for the second bidder from "3" to "2".

This resulted in the overall score of the second bidder being 59.2%.

If the score was not changed, the second bidder would have "qualified for functionality".

"The end result was that the second bidder failed to meet the required 60% for functionality, disqualifying them from advancing through to the next stage of the tender process. Digital Vibes quoted R141-million, and the second bidder quoted R69-million. It should be noted that Digital Vibes was R72-million (104%) more expensive than the second bidder," Mothibi's presentation read.