Four years ago today, whistleblower Babita Deokaran sent a chilling message to her boss:

"Our lives could be in danger." 12 days later, she was dead.

This is the story of that warning, in a @News24 🧵. #BabitaDeokaran "Morning CFO, I am just worried that the guys in Tembisa are going to realise we are not releasing their payments and know that we are onto something. Our lives could be in danger." - 11 Aug 2021, 7:42am

Four years ago today, Babita Deokaran filed a report flagging R850m in suspicious Tembisa Hospital payments. Within weeks, she was dead. This is the price of knowing too much. A @News24 🧵 On 3 August 2021, Deokaran discovered R104m in troubling procurement anomalies at Tembisa Hospital. She froze payments and informed Acting CFO Lerato Madyo. This was the beginning of Deokaran’s end.

@News24 has followed the R360m SAPS tender saga involving Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala for months. A cloud of corruption, fraud and blood envelops the highest levels of SA policing. This is #9Lives - our investigation into the man who lived large - Until now 🧵

https://twitter.com/wicks_jeff/status/1940255728297537563

Matlala’s company, Medicare24 Tswane District, won the police tender in June 2024. Internal audits found “fronting”, doctored documents and outright fraud. Yet the money kept flowing. R30m was paid AFTER SAPS brass was warned of problems.

🧵 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.

Katiso "KT" Molefe is the supposed paymaster tied to a hit squad - facing charges related to an assassination. Today, to his visible chagrin, he was denied bail. @News24 has followed his dalliance with the law. A 🧵

https://twitter.com/wicks_jeff/status/1907431946910646773

This story starts with the murder of Armand Swart. He was an uncontroversial man. A father of two boys who liked to fish and spend time with this family. On April 17 last year, he was shot in the driveway of the Vereeniging engineering company where he worked.

When Armand Swart was gunned down in the middle of April, we struggled to pin down why. It turns out that, two weeks before the killing, his company made a whistleblower report. A short 🧵

https://twitter.com/wicks_jeff/status/1832975151463285093

On April 17, Swart arrived at work at the Vereeniging engineering firm where he worked. He was waiting for the gate to open when a car swung alongside him. Those inside unleashed 23 shots, which made their intent clear.

At 08h24 – three years ago tomorrow – hitmen pumped twelve bullets into Babita Deokaran. She had just dropped her daughter at school. Unbeknownst to her, she had been stalked for days, and her assassins had been lying in wait.

This is what happened and what transpired since 🧵 18 days earlier, Deokaran reported concerns about R850m in suspicious payments from @TembisaHospital and halted R100m in outgoing funds. This is the first link in her chain of disaster.

Our political actors and the tenderprenuers who fund them can't seem to help themselves when it comes to splurging the trappings of wealth, specifically sports cars. A short 🧵on how they do this - without getting caught. Politicians need a way to skirt much-vaunted lifestyle audits. The tenderpreneurs need a way to get SARS off their backs. The answer is cold, hard cash, washed through complex laundromats of company and personal accounts.

Just minutes after #BabitaDeokaran was riddled with bullets, her boss, Lerato Madyo, sent her a seemingly prescient Whatsapp message: "Are u ok?????!!!!"

A thread 🧵 This message - with its tenor and drastic punctuation - cannot be viewed in isolation. @News24 has plotted a timeline of e-mails, chats and phone calls between Deokaran and Madyo.

news24.com/news24/investi…

We have been investigating the death of #BabitaDeokaran for more than a year. We have exposed the Tembisa Hospital as a contract factory - beset by an extraction network of fake companies. A 🧵of what we have found. Three weeks before she was murdered, Deokaran reported a list of 217 entities she worried were fraudulent. She died before she could take her probe further, and @GautengHealth seemed happy to ignore what she found.