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Home Affairs crackdown, 18 officials fired for fraud, graft, sexual harassment

Source: Daily Mavrick, 22/11/2024




Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has announced that his department has dismissed 18 officials for a range of offences including corruption, fraud and sexual harassment. Now, criminal charges will follow where applicable. The purge of 18 “errant” Home Affairs officials â€` conducted in cooperation with the Special Investigating Unit and the Hawks â€` is in line with Schreiber’s vow to root out corruption, fraud and maladministration in the department he inherited earlier this year.The department revealed on Wednesday, 20 November 2024 that the officials were axed with immediate effect, for the following reasons:•Four were fired for irregularly granting ID documents;•Six for irregularly registering marriages;•Three for irregularly processing birth certificates;•One for irregularly processing passports;•One for irregular approval of visa applications;•One for irregular extension of asylum seeker permits;•One for sexual harassment; and•One for the irregular deactivation of a file.“These dismissals send a clear and unambiguous message that the days where acts of fraud and corruption are committed with impunity against Home Affairs are over. Dismissals and prosecutions are set to continue ramping up until we have squeezed crime and corruption out of the system,” Schrieber said.Four other officials were issued with final written warnings, two of which carry salary suspensions for one and three months. Two other officials received written warnings.The department said that, where applicable, prosecutable offences would be referred to the National Prosecuting Authority for criminal charges, while Home Affairs works on measures to recover ill-gotten gains from perpetrators.The rot Daily Maverick has previously reported that in 2022, former director-general in the Presidency Cassius Lubisi released a report exposing the rot in the Department of Home Affairs, with detailed evidence of visa application fraud and misuse of the department’s antiquated systems. Navigate the new normalThe climate has changed. Our ways need to, too.Sign up for the weekly Our Burning Planet newsletter to stay informed on the biggest challenges facing humanity - and the solutions to them.The most recent and highly publicised instance of fraud and corruption facilitated by Home Affairs officials was the case of Chidimma Adetshina. When questions about Adetshina’s citizenship arose after she became a finalist in the Miss SA pageant, a Home Affairs investigation uncovered evidence that her mother may have stolen the identity of a South African mother in 2001 when Adetshina was an infant. In October, the department revealed plans to cancel the ID and travel documents for Adetshina and her mother.Earlier this year, whistle-blowers exposed the Consul-General in Dubai, Andrew Tsepo Lebona, for his involvement in an elaborate scam which involved selling South African visas to United Arab Emirates citizens. A Sunday Times report claimed that Lebona allegedly arranged break-ins at his offices as part of an elaborate scheme to sell visas for UAE citizens to enter South Africa.


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