The accused, which include two government officials and five company directors, were arrested by members of the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) on Friday 30 July and have been behind bars for the past weekend. 

Free State Hawks Spokesperson, Christopher Singo, says the accused are being charged with fraud, forgery, money laundering, and corruption after it was found that the five company directors submitted falsified payment invoices to the department for services that are not known to have been rendered. Singo tells OFM News the accused are yet to appear in court.

Singo says these requests for payments were submitted during January 2011 and December 2015 and were flagged during auditing processes. The arrests come nearly two years after the Hawks raided the Provincial Health Department’s headquarters in Bloemfontein 

READ: Hawks raid at FS Health involves over R200 million's allegations

Very little was said at the time about the ongoing investigation by the Hawks, except that the raid pertained to alleged tender fraud to the tune of R240 million. Several documents and laptops were seized at the time but no arrests were made. It is yet to be confirmed if Friday’s arrests are in relation to the aforementioned raid in 2019.

OFM News