Thread by @wicks_jeff

🧵 THREAD: Tembisa Hospital corruption kingpin Stefan Govindraju now faces criminal tax charges. This is the latest chapter in a @News24 investigation that began with a murdered whistleblower. Let me explain

In August 2021, Babita Deokaran was gunned down outside her home. She was the Gauteng Health chief accountant who flagged R850 million in suspicious hospital payments. Three weeks before her murder, she demanded an urgent probe.

Deokaran spotted something alarming at Tembisa Hospital: 217 suppliers receiving payments for medical equipment at impossible prices. It seemed to her someone was systematically looting the public health system.

The method was simple but devastating. Keep payments under R500k to avoid rigorous procurement. Use the "three-quote system" instead of public tenders. Multiply across dozens of shell companies. Bank millions, R500k at a time.

Enter Stefan Govindraju. The 36-year-old businessman became central to this web. Through 56 shell companies, he and his network banked nearly R450 million in just two years. The scale was staggering.

Read this story here:

news24.com/investigations…

Deokaran’s murder sent a chilling message: expose the Tembisa Hospital truth and pay with your life. The syndicates thought they were free and clear. They were wrong.

📖 Our investigation: specialprojects.news24.com/silenced/index…

Using 60,000 emails from Deokaran's laptop, we revealed the full scope of the extraction. What she uncovered in her final weeks was staggering - systematic plunder of funds meant to heal the sick.

The 56 shell companies had fake addresses. Directors were Govindraju’s relatives, friends and co-workers. When we exposed them, something remarkable happened: within 48 hours, they all resigned and handed him control.

This mass resignation suggests Govindraju played puppet master. He took control of a quarter of the 217 suppliers Deokaran had flagged. The Special Investigating Unit later named him a key "syndicate" leader.

Now, three years later, we reveal Govindraju's web was wider than known. We found five more shell companies - Fuligenix, Vuliscore, Diolix, Zoolop Trading, Samdavid Trading - extracting another R16 million.

Last week, Govindraju appeared in Roodepoort Magistrate's Court facing criminal tax charges for failing to submit returns for Fuligenix. SARS is pursuing the man at the heart of this scandal.

We could prove that Govindraju's entities inflated prices, and we had long figured out how he did it. Read here:

news24.com/investigations…

With Fuligenix in the spotlight of SARS, we took a deeper look. In 2020, Fuligenix sold Tembisa Hospital 20 pairs of surgical scissors for R194,400. That's nearly R10,000 per pair. We found identical scissors for a fraction of that cost.

Same company sold 30 sets of forceps for R216,000 - R7,200 each. Our investigation found these were inflated by up to 6000%. Six thousand percent. Public procurement has "value for money" at its heart.

What makes this tragic is Deokaran saw it coming. She tried to stop payments. Called for investigations. Followed proper procedures. And for doing her job, she was murdered. A career of service rewarded with death.

An important rider: There is no evidence to suggest that Govindraju had a hand in her assassination. But let me not digress.

Six men have been sentenced for pulling the trigger. But the masterminds - those who ordered her death - remain free. The people who killed her to protect this R2.3 billion feeding trough have not yet been held accountable.

The SIU identified "severe procurement irregularities and misconduct." They uncovered fraud, corruption, fronting, collusion, and money laundering. Yet prosecutions remain out of reach.

As the fourth anniversary of Deokaran's murder approaches, SARS's criminal tax charges against Govindraju represent a mote of accountability.

This is about more than money. This extraction happened at public hospitals serving the poorest communities. Every rand stolen was a rand not spent on medicine, equipment, care for those who needed it most.

This story continues. Hawks and SIU investigations proceed. More shell companies may be uncovered. The full scope of Tembisa Hospital graft may be even larger than the R2.3 billion already identified.

Babita Deokaran’s legacy isn’t just the corruption she exposed - it’s the ongoing fight for accountability. Her murder was meant to silence the truth. Instead, it became the beginning of Gauteng’s largest health corruption probe. 🧵

Long-running and resource-intensive investigations like this one are only possible with the support of our @News24 - you help us follow the money.