National Treasury has revealed a whole host of dodgy dealings that have been happening in the South African government. From dead people to links to tenders, what an utter mess it is.

The SA treasury has revealed that it has discovered around 12 000 dead people in its register showing companies that do business with the South African Government.

The information comes after National Treasury carried out a program to clean up and analyse the information system that was used by Treasury’s procurement office.

The operation also found that there are 14 000 state employees who are listed as directors of companies that have been handed state contracts.

All of those contracts are therefore in violation of regulations.

“We will report on them even if we drag those 14,000 to court by their hair and lock them up,” The unit’s acting head Schalk Human previously said in an interview this month in Pretoria.

The unit was created four years ago to cut spending and seek out corruptions.

Human explained that people create companies with fake documents and use the identities of dead citizens to enter competing bids. Their “real” company is more than likely to get the tender after more expensive bids from the “dead” individuals.

Treasury says that inflated prices and fraud from suppliers consume around 40% of the state’s entire R600 billion budget for goods and services.

Analyst Ralph Mathekga told BusnessLive that the procurement office of the state is not protected from political interference.

“The information is there but the question is whether there is the political will to act decisively to relieve the civil servants doing business with the state of their employment,” he told the publication.

One particular example of a dodgy deal by government is Eskom’s R659m payment for coal from Tegeta. This payment was done before the coal was delivered and Treasury says the correct procedures were not followed.

The unit has also insisted that it will oversee procurement operations for the government’s proposal to build new nuclear plants.

“We are not going to frustrate the process but we want honest, clean, transparent processes. If we don’t have the assurance that our cabinet has approved that, then we can’t subscribe to such a nuclear plan.”

Let’s hope we don’t have any dead people approving a nuclear deal.