The Office of the Auditor-General has raised concerns over R650-million in irregular expenditure detected in the police department.
This information was disclosed on Monday at a meeting of parliament’s portfolio committee on police, which was attended by national police commissioner Fannie Masemola, acting police minister Firoz Cachalia, and other high-ranking officials.
Compared to the 2023/24 financial year, the irregular expenditure has increased.
According to the auditor-general’s office, about R184-million of the R650-million was identified in 2025, but it actually relates to contracts from the previous year.
But it was included in the total because it had to be reported for the first time in 2025.
“We find that there is inconsistent application of their prequalifying criteria that they advertise in the bids,” said the Office of the Auditor-General.
“The suppliers who score the highest scores are not awarded the bid; the bid [gets] awarded to suppliers who did not meet all phases of the continuous evaluation, and bids that were responsive will be unfairly disqualified.
“With such findings, one is exposing the department to some litigation that is likely to come because of the unfairness of some of these bids.”
Irregular expenditure identified
A further R52.8-million was identified as irregular expenditure but is still under assessment and has not yet been disclosed pending confirmation.
The auditor-general’s office also reported that both the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA) continue to show rising balances of irregular expenditure.
PSIRA was found to have exceeded its budget and continued to disregard procurement rules, while the SAPS was said to have ongoing issues with compliance with procurement laws and regulations.
“Concern remains on these two institutions of the portfolio, the SAPS together with PSIRA. On the procurement and contract management side, for a number of years at the police department, we’ve been raising issues about the ability to be able to comply with laws and regulations in that area.
“But together, in the current year, we have identified that even PSIRA has had problems complying with some of the procurement prescripts in this phase, as well as the quality of financial statements; this was raised in PSIRA,” said the auditor-general’s office.
PSIRA was also found to have used three firms for its audits in 2024 and has been encouraged to outsource audit services instead.
The auditor-general’s office also raised concerns about SAPS’s bid evaluation process, saying there were inconsistencies between what was advertised and how the bids were evaluated. It added that this leads to unfairness in awarding contracts.
Progress in combating drug syndicates
Meanwhile, the SAPS reported progress in combating drug syndicates, revealing that it has made 85 arrests from 18 out of the 23 identified drug networks.
“Although the target of 50% of identified organised criminal groups linked to prioritised crime threats was not achieved, significant progress was made with a 20.28% increase [12 out of 28] neutralised, resulting in 93 arrests,” according to a police report.
The report also highlighted growing concern over the number of state-owned firearms that are stolen or lost, with 574 cases recorded.
Cachalia said the police report showed room for improvement in visible policing, pointing out that the auditor-general’s findings reflect “stagnation rather than deterioration”.
“When it comes to the audit outcome, yes, the audit was unqualified, but the auditor-general specifically raised issues of irregular expenditure, which link to the issues of supply chain, procurement irregularities, and possibly worse, procurement fraud.
“The auditor-general’s report together with your questions has given us some homework to do. One reason for the stagnation is that the response to the last audit outcome was inadequate.
“So, the post-audit action plan and its implementation are something I will prioritise, including filling in the vacancies in the internal audit function,” said Cachalia.
