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- The financial director of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Caiphus Ramashau, has been suspended.
- This is related to a failed land deal of R118 million in New York.
- The district attorney has welcomed the suspension, but says there were others involved who have not yet been suspended.
Caiphus Ramashau, CFO of the Department of International Relations, has been suspended in connection with a 118 million rand deal in New York to buy non-existent land. The Democratic Alliance has welcomed its suspension.
News of the suspension emerged this week after CEO Kgabo Mahoai was suspended last month in connection with the deal.
DA deputy and international relations spokesperson Mergan Chetty said she had asked questions after Ramashau was absent from a portfolio committee meeting this week, and was subsequently informed of the preventive suspension “after much reluctance on the part. of the officials “.
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Chetty said the party still had serious concerns about other top officials involved in the project who had not been suspended.
“It has now emerged that the department committed to sublet office space for our missions in New York, and the same role players involved in the rand 118 million shenanigans are also at the center of this new arrangement,” he said in a released on Sunday.
“This is a recipe for disaster, and we take it to [International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor’s] attention.”
The party previously said that Mahoai’s suspension was “a smokescreen to protect other senior officials closely linked to senior politicians.”
Chetty said he had written to President Cyril Ramaphosa requesting the suspension of the Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, as well as Ambassador Jerry Matjila, who was CEO at the time the agreement began. .
Matjila, however, has recently retired after serving as South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations for four years.
Pandor said in Parliament earlier this month that the department was making efforts to recoup the money through a review of the tender in the high court.
The department’s spokesman, Lunga Ngqengelele, could not be reached for comment.
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