The Speaker of the City of Cape Town Council says he will continue paying for investigations into suspect councilors after a scandal erupted today (Wednesday) over how a probe into Badih Chaaban was funded.

But the provincial government and the ID are calling for answers over how the council came to pay thousands of rands to private investigators before the city had even received quotes for investigations.

It is being argued that the DA and not the city should have paid for the investigation, because it pertained to Chaaban’s alleged political activities in the lead-up to and during the September floor-crossing period.

Speaker Dirk Smit said on Wednesday that he had been presented with prima facie evidence that threats had been made against councilors, that councilors had been offered bribes and that the city’s Code of Conduct for councilors had been breached.

He said that in terms of the Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000, he was obliged to investigate.

“Article 13 of the Code of Conduct for councillors states that ‘if the chairperson (Speaker) of a municipal council, on reasonable suspicion, is of the opinion that a provision of this code has been breached, the chairperson must’ not may ‘authorise an investigation of the facts and circumstances of the alleged breach’,” Smit said.

He said he had ordered an initial investigation, followed by a second, which was ongoing.

“I am going to continue with further investigations,” he said on Wednesday.

“Just on Tuesday I received a fresh complaint by a councillor and I will investigate.”

He said the investigations had cost about R97 000 and R57 000 so far.

The outcome of the investigations, and the subsequent reports Smit had received, had been a disciplinary hearing against Chaaban and a dossier of information that had been given to the police.

“I would not like to discuss what was handed to police, because it may interfere with the police investigation,” he said.

Smit confirmed that he was investigating the payments.

Mayor Helen Zille said on Wednesday she had asked Smit why he had initiated the investigations and he had explained that he had been obliged to by law. She had accepted this.

She said the allegations were serious enough to pose a threat to the city.

She asked why the police had not investigated the allegations in the first place and why they had not followed up on the evidence presented to them by the city.

But Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has called on Zille to come clean.

“I am shocked at these allegations that show to what extent Mayor Zille may have wanted to go, to remain mayor of the city,” Rasool said on Wednesday.

Rasool said he would meet provincial Police Commissioner Mzwandile Petros and senior law enforcement officials on Wednesday.

He would consider instituting a full investigation into the matter, he said.

“I would advise that the mayor come clean and co-operates, because she has built her reputation on being aware of everything that happens in either the city or DA and she is the head of both,” Rasool said.

Simon Grindrod, the ID caucus leader in the city, called for an urgent independent investigation into the matter.

“We wrote to the Speaker in early August asking if private investigators were being used in City investigations. These are very serious allegations concerning possible abuse of ratepayers money,” he said.

Corruption, bribery investigation

The Cape Argus has learnt that Smit signed off on payments by the City to the Mossel Bay franchise of George Fivaz and Associates (GFA) for more than R80 000 for work, which, according to invoices, was done before GFA provided its first quote to his office on June 1.

These payments coincide with the date that DA federal executive chairperson and MP James Selfe requested a quote from the same firm for the same services to investigate “corruption and bribery” in relation to Chaaban.

The June 1 quotation from GFA almost exactly mirrored the one that the DA received 10 days earlier and Selfe says the DA decided not to act upon.

Smit said yesterday that he knew nothing about the DA’s prior dealings with GFA and had experienced no pressure either to hire the investigators to probe Chaaban or to agree to pay their invoices for surveillance work in late May.

With Smit approving the probe it meant that ratepayers rather than the DA ended up having to foot a bill. The bill grew with a second probe linked to Chaaban.

A third post-floor crossing probe was later undertaken.

Because each probe was regarded as a separate urgent investigation and was not over the threshold limit, none was put out to tender or scrutinised by a committee.

According to the documents, the city approved at least two payments, totalling R153 337 one for R54 708 on June 28 and one for R98 629 on August 31.

Smit said yesterday that he was ordering an investigation into being billed for work before June 1. He said error could not be ruled out.

Smit confirmed that GFA had used the services of an investigator who had since been arrested in connection with hijacking. He said he had frozen payment on the third contract after he heard about the investigator’s arrest.

The man’s former handler at the National Intelligence Agency has since been suspended and two members of the elite Scorpions unit were arrested in connection with charges of obstruction of justice after they allegedly tried to get the case against this man dropped.

GFA, Mossel Bay, is a franchise outlet owned by Niel van Heerden, a former police deputy area commissioner. The franchiser is ex national police commissioner George Fivaz.

Van Heerden refused to comment about the arrested in-vestigator, who he said ran his own private company. He said his GFA franchise had not done work for the DA and was still contracted by the Cape Town council, one of many councils countrywide that had employ-ed GFA.

Last week, a disciplinary committee of the city council recommended that Chaaban be removed from office based on the GFA investigations.

The committee found that Chaaban had been found guilty on three counts of “having enticed colleague councilors to resign from their current parties in exchange for gratification”.