How to spot a fake BEE certificate
How to spot a fake BEE certificate. Tembisa Hospital corruption story
News24 ran an article about Morgan Maumela who was apparently paid R820 million by Tembisa Hospital. It’s not for us to go into those details. What is interesting to us is that the same Mr Maumela submitted a R1bn bid for catering services to the North West health department through Aloo Construction and Supply. Among the documents he submitted was a fake BEE certificate.
HOW FAKE WAS THE CERTIFICATE?
As far as fake BEE certificates go this is an extraordinary one. It is such a bad fake that anyone in the BEE industry would throw it out within seconds.
The first thing you may notice is that this is no longer the format that Empowerlogic uses. Their layout and logo have changed. Here’s an example of a more recent Empowerlogic certificate.
The change in logo might be that obvious to many. And I do recommend that you look at recent certificates from VAs if an apparent fake comes your way.
The actual certificate that was issued showed us the following
1) The company wasn’t registered for VAT and it was bidding for a R1bn contract
2) The points to levels was based on the 2007 BEE codes
3) The actual BEE code that was used was Code 000 gazetted on 9 February 2007
4) The certificate was issued sometime in the 2020s, you can’t see because of the FAKE watermark on the certificate
5) Also was issued with a level one
Here are the problems with this certificate
i) The 2007 BEE codes were replaced with the amended codes in October 2013
ii) The October 2013 codes made it clear that all 100% companies with an annual turnover need only submit an affidavit
iii) The 2007 codes required exempt micro enterprises (EMEs) to get an auditor’s letter confirming turnover. If the black shareholding was in excess of 50% then that EME would be promoted to a level 3, not a level 1
a. Having noted that. The code did say that if an EME wanted to improve their rating they could be measured under the then Qualifying Small Enterprises (QSE) code. This certificate is absolutely an EME certificate
iv) Some might be confused by the name of the company, Aloo Construction and Supply and assume that it should be measured as a construction company. Names can deceive, and this company was bidding for catering. We can let this one go
No one in the BEE industry, be that consultants or verification agencies would fall for this. But it is alarming that a procurement officer in a government department might be fooled. It’s such a brazen fake that Aloo must have been very convinced that they would win this tender and the BEE fraud wouldn’t come to light.
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